The Kerry suicide counselling organisation, Cluaiscint, hopes to begin the development of a national "peace corps" for young Irish people within the next six months. A two-year residential programme will begin with a nucleus of six people in Tralee around September.
It will be a stay-at-home peace corps, involved in the local community. It will offer young people between second and third-level education a chance to assess their lives and learn about the social realities in their own communities.
It will ask them to become involved in voluntary groups and help people who are socially deprived.
Cluaiscint means the understanding ear. It was started in 1993 as a bereavement service for people affected by suicide. Among the founders were Sister Katherine Tierney, a Bon Secours nun.
Cluaiscint was a response to the number of suicides in Kerry and elsewhere at the time. In 1998 Kerry had the highest rate of suicide of any county.
At a conference in September in Tralee organised by Rotary International, it was estimated that 75,000 people throughout the State were suffering the effects of suicide. Suicide still is the most common cause of death in the 15 to 24-year age group.
Cluaiscint is not a self-help group. It is training 20 more counsellors and it has extended to deal with crisis management.
"When you meet the teenagers affected by suicide you try to find out how these children are coping, what resources there are for them, who is the significant other in their life, so that when you leave, you know they are going to be OK," Sister Katherine says. "In families, you try to find out is there anyone the suicide is having a special effect on."
The project attempts to address the immensely complex "why" of suicide - a "why", says Sister Katherine, that may be rooted in a pervading sense among many young people of hopelessness, apathy and of being unable to change the world.
A Killarney public relations consultant, Mr Frank Lewis, is researching the peace corps project. He has presented the idea at EU level, and says that funding will not be an obstacle. A building has already been identified and the logistics can easily be arranged, he says.
In Germany and Austria, young people are compelled to spend two years on military or community service, he points out. In an Irish peace corps, young people would take time out for two years and get involved in civic, social and heritage projects.
Attracting teenagers who are at risk will still be a problem, he admits. And initially teenagers who already have a keen civic sense will be the ones to join. But the peace corps idea will be a start and it will spread, he believes.
Since Sister Katherine floated the idea on Morning Ireland recently the response has been tremendous, he says.
"We have a frightening level of suicide. There is a terrible need to do something." And that something has to be radical, Mr Lewis says. "You have to interrupt the system to address this huge problem."