Should Samaritans Ireland go it alone?

The suspension by Samaritans of their Samaritans Radar Twitter app on the grounds of invasion of peoples’ privacy, is to be welcomed.

The introduction of this app is very disconcerting as the core value of Samaritans is advertised as caller confidentiality.

The Samaritans remain a very important and necessary service in Irish society. As such it is important that its activities are monitored.

It appears that the Samaritans wish to become a partner with one of the large online companies, which as they should now realise is fraught with difficulties. The fact that Samaritans agreed in 2011 to compromise caller confidentiality here and become a reporting agency for the HSE remains its policy, despite it being so clearly against Samaritan ethos.

May be it is time for Samaritans within Ireland to manage their own organisation?

Anthony J Jordan

Gilford Road

Dublin 4