A Fianna Fáil backbencher told the Dáil that his Co Laois-based undertaking business had dealt with six funerals resulting from suicide in the past six weeks.
John Moloney, from Mountmellick, who chaired an Oireachtas subcommittee on suicide, said that the problem had to be dealt with urgently.
While he did not wish to differ with Minister of State for Health Tim O'Malley, he was convinced that targets had to be set. "We will lose valuable time if we wait for more information to be collected." Mr Moloney said he was coming to the debate as a country funeral undertaker.
"Over the years I have seen the hardship caused to families and communities by the act of suicide. I see despair and frustration, a lack of guidance and a wonderment of where we went wrong and where the system fails." During an in-depth debate on suicide in Ireland, TDs spoke of encountering the human tragedy involved in their work as public representatives.
Limerick West Fine Gael TD Dan Neville, who has long campaigned on the issue, said that international experts estimated that more than 80 per cent, with one study suggesting as many as 87 per cent, of people taking their own lives suffered from a psychiatric illness. "Young people who commit suicide are often suffering from undiagnosed depression."
Fine Gael's health spokesman Dr Liam Twomey said the Joint Committee on Health and Children had been told that a five-year-old boy had discovered his father hanging in a garage."That will never leave that young boy." He said that those left behind asked themselves if something they said had led to the catastrophic event for the family.
He said that because people had become more detached from interaction in their communities, it should not come as a surprise to learn that the risk of suicide had increased significantly. New policies were needed.
Alcohol consumption had increased by 40 per cent in the past decade, he said. "It may be coincidental but the increase in suicide over the same period was also roughly 40 per cent." Labour's spokeswoman Liz McManus, and other speakers, also referred to the link between alcohol consumption and suicide.
Ms McManus said the second report of the strategic taskforce on alcohol had indicated that Ireland had a major problem in respect of alcohol abuse.
Irish adults had the highest reported consumption per drinker and the highest level of binge drinking compared to adults in other European countries.
Sinn Féin spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said there was a need to see the problem in the context of the second-level education system which placed enormous pressure on students.
"Children are going from a progressive, child-centred primary education system to secondary schools where an exam-driven pressure cooker environment is the order of the day."
Green Party spokesman John Gormley said that much of life had now become a commodity. "The rearing of children, childcare and looking after older people are now commodities. People are paid to do things and the idea of volunteerism is now gone."
Paudge Connolly (Independent) said some studies suggested that suicide was under-reported by about 16 per cent.
