Wexford tragedy - Lesson has not been learned

More than 1,000 people attended the funeral yesterday of the four members of the Flood family who were found dead in their burned out home in Clonroche, Co Wexford, last week.

The turnout was a testament to the feelings of the community struck by two such tragedies in little over a year.

After the nearby Monagear tragedy, nothing had been done to ensure that help would be available for those who seek it. The funeral turnout would suggest that people realise that such a tragedy could strike anywhere, and it is in everyone’s interest that lessons should be learned.

We have shut down and sold off residential mental health institutions without providing the necessary replacement facilities within the community to ensure that help is available to those in need. Suggesting that mental health as been reformed is absurd, because what has been done has not only been irresponsible, but recklessly so.

Suicide has become a widespread problem within the country and it could increase if the economic pressure increases. Maybe providing proper reform will not prevent the same thing happening again somewhere, else, but society will at least have tried.