Paramilitaries blamed for suicides

Paramilitary groups in the North were blamed today for the level of suicide among young men.

Shaun Woodward, the North’s health minister, made a special appeal to those who had influence over those who engaged in paramilitary activities.

He said one of the distinctive features of young male suicides in Northern Ireland was its connection as a consequence of paramilitary-style attacks.

Mr Woodward announced he was setting up a special task force to study suicide which would come up with proposals by the autumn.

But he said if paramilitary-style attacks on young men could be ended, lives would immediately be saved.

He said: “This is a special flavour to Northern Ireland. You take out a young man. You shoot him in the kneecaps or the ankles. He’ll never play sport again. His manhood feels destroyed. His self esteem – like his bones – is shattered.

“So when it comes to dealing with this problem remember that with not a penny more if we could end the paramilitary-style attacks on these young men, we’d start saving many of these lives from tomorrow.”

He said suicide was a tragic waste of life but he said it was not necessarily about throwing more money at the problem, what was needed was a joined up local and regional policy.

“If we could solve the problem with a chequebook it would have been done,” he said.

“Scotland have invested an extra £12m (€18.1m) in such a strategy in the last couple of years and they are still unable to stay whether it has actually changed the rates of suicide.”

However he stressed he was not saying that more money may not be essential in tackling the issue.

He praised Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, Ulster Unionist MP Lady Sylvia Hermon and the DUP’s Nigel Dodds MP for their work in bringing suicide to the forefront of the health agenda.

He said he had found common cause in politicians across the spectrum who wanted to address the issue.

He said while some of the reasons for suicide may have its roots in the politics of the Troubles, a solution would in part be a health one and not a political one.