The Leaving Certificate points system was an indication of the sink-or-swim attitude adopted by Irish society to its young people, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev John Neil said yesterday.
Defining 15- to 25-year-olds as a very high-risk group in today's Ireland, he observed that they were the people who had grown up during the years of accelerating change.
He was giving his presidential address to the Dublin and Glendalough diocesan synod at Taney Hall in Dundrum, Co Dublin.
"In a four-year period across the turn of the present century in the Republic, the highest number of suicides was in this 15-25 age group. The age group up to 35 years of age was only slightly behind. The number of male suicides in a similar period was about four males to every one female," he said.
"However, more recently the number of suicides has risen to six males to every one female."
Even more frightening was the fact that in the Republic there had been a 26 per cent increase in suicides in the last 10 years.
"The highest level of binge drinking in Europe occurs among Irish teenagers aged 15-16 years. We are told that 300,000 Irish people of various age groups suffer from depression, and a significant number of these are young adults.
"Those who live in urban Ireland have the highest rate of depression in the whole of Europe," the archbishop said.
The tragedy of suicide was a symptom of a society of which we were part, and that aspect of the problem involved us all.
He said he felt that for too long there had been a tendency for people to complain about the younger generation and even to suggest that they had it easy and others all had it tough. Not only was this not true, because the fact that people had more money and more variety to life was not giving them an easier life.
"Instead, the world where values have gone all awry, the world where all certainties have collapsed, and where life changes so fast that security of any kind is hard to find, is a very difficult place in which to grow up," Archbishop Neil said.