Kids are Great

Kids are the same everywhere. They are great craic. I remember visiting Phola Park, a vast squatter camp not far from Soweto in South Africa in the summer of 1995. The conditions were appalling. Families were living in one room structures made from pieces of battered corrugated tin held together with bits of wire and rope.

There was an overwhelming sense of great poverty. Very few had employment of any kind. Health care was basic. There was one water tap and a row of outside latrines. And it was all covered in dust.

But the people had a huge sense of pride in their contribution to the end of apartheid and the election the previous year of Madiba (Mandela), as President of a new free South Africa.

Their living conditions might have been primitive but their hearts were huge and the welcome they gave our small delegation of Shinners was mighty.

They danced and sang and their voices soared in exuberance over the barren landscape around them.

There were kids everywhere. Hundreds running around. They were enthusiastic participants in the songs and dances. They leaped through the air, jumping and gyrating. Most had no shoes or socks and wore old battered jumpers and frayed shorts.

They were curious too.

‘Who are you?’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Ireland? Where’s that?’

Robert McBride our host and guide, who had spent years on death row in an apartheid prison, told us of the ANC’s hopes for the future – new housing, schools and jobs.
He and his comrades were focussed on building a better future for the people of Phola Park and Soweto.

The energy and sense of hope and joy of young people is infectious, whether in South Africa, or west Belfast or Gaza or Dundalk.

Last Monday night that sense of excitement was evident in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dundalk.

RTE was broadcasting the second in a series of programmes entitled ‘The Secret Millionaire’. John Fitzpatrick is a New York based hotelier who was dropped off in Dundalk by the program makers – a place he had never been in before.

His objective was to identify individuals or groups he would give money to, to sustain or enhance their quality of life and project. They had all been told he was a native Irishman returning home to do a documentary on how communities here are responding to the economic crisis.

Last Monday night John hired a large room in the Crowne Plaza. It was packed to overflowing with many of those he had met during his time filming in the county Louth town. He had invited them to come and watch RTE broadcast the programme on a big screen.

And again it was the young people who shone through. They had no inhibitions. Despite living in some of the most disadvantaged social housing estates in the state these young people were bursting with energy. They laughed and joked and slagged each other and John. When someone they knew appeared on screen a huge shout of recognition went up.

In all John handed out almost €40,000 to local projects. Craobh Rua is a Doolargy based youth group which provides after schools activities and homework clubs and works hard to ensure that children stay in education. One young lad, Joel Maguire so impressed John with his singing that he has arranged for him to have singing lessons and he later brought Joel and his mother to Dublin for the Rhianna concert.

The Cuidigh Linn group is based in Muirhevnamor. It provides maintenance workers for elderly people who for a token fee will carry out repairs and decoration work on homes and gardens. The €15,000 John gave this group went toward buying a van. The O Hanlon Park Boxing club received €2,000 with which they were able to buy new kit, including head gear and sparring gloves. The club caters for over 80 ranging in age from 7 to 70.

The programme didn’t shy away from the anti-social and poor housing and health problems of people living in Cox’s Demesne and Muirhevnamor estates.
But what came through was the integrity, humanity and compassion of the mainly voluntary workers who help the young, the disabled and the elderly. I include John Fitzpatrick in this excellent company.

What was also evidence is the very positive effect of relatively small amounts of money when this money is invested in disadvantaged communities. Citizens working at the coal face know how to get value for every cent to improve the lives of our youth, elderly and disabled neighbours.

Secret Millionaire was an inspiring story made all the more relevant and moving because none of those taking part knew what the underlying purpose of the film was.

This blog has had the opportunity to travel to all parts of this island. Everywhere I go I am amazed and humbled and very proud of the numbers of people, whether in the GAA or Conradh na Gaeilge or in the community and voluntary sector, who freely give of their time to help others. Well done to all who took part in ‘The Secret Millionaire’.

The Clinton Global Initiative

Bill Clinton’s pulling power has not been diminished by his years out of office. If anything he is more popular today in the USA that when he was President.

The Clinton Global Initiative is his event. It is branded with the Clinton name and it reflects his values and ethos and politics, especially in seeking to help disadvantaged people and communities around the globe.

The CGI is held each year to coincide with the full meeting of the UN General Assembly. Consequently, it is a magnet for current and former Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and Presidents and political leaders, who arrive in New York wanting to network with others and happy to share a high profile platform to talk on the major issues of the day.

This is my seventh year at the CGI. When former President Clinton established it in 2005 he invited this blog to be a member. I was happy to join and to travel there each year to participate in the discussions and to listen and learn from others.

The CGI is an innovative project which brings together political and economic leaders to devise and implement solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges, including poverty, climate change, inequality, and job creation.

Since 2005 the CGI has succeeded in improving the lives of over 300 million people in more than 180 countries through commitments valued in excess of $63 billion. This year another 6 billion dollars in commitments were made at the conference.

And it is this that marks the CGI out as different from other international conferences at which notable guests speak about issues of immediate concern. At the CGI participants are expected to make a commitment to action – that will see money, technical and human resources and enthusiasm and energy invested into a time limited specific project which has a definite outcome.

This can be the creation of jobs, the delivery of health services, the provision of water or telecommunications or education or skills training or a multitude of other outcomes.

This year’s CGI had three main topics. Jobs, sustainable consumption, and Girls and Women. A big part of the three day event focused on climate change and the danger it presents, for example to low lying areas as a result of rising sea levels.

The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasine, warned that this threatened one fifth of her country, which is one of the poorest in the world and that this would displace over 30 million people. Another example cited was the Maldives islands in the Indian Ocean which some predicted might not exist in 30 or 40 years.

It is quite clear that the failure of world states to agree a legally binding agreement on carbon emissions is the source of much of the current difficulties. In addition the Kyoto Protocol on climate change will expire next year.

In two months representatives from world governments will be attending the United Nations convention on climate change in Durban, South Africa. It is vital that new rules are agreed that are legally binding and that they are monitored.

Rising sea levels also threaten parts of this island. It is a danger that must be taken seriously and action taken to minimise any dangers. The Irish government needs to go to Durban with a clear strategy to propose and support ideas which can tackle climate change.

Day one of the CGI also saw former Irish President Mary Robinson along with Archbishop Tutu of South Africa, announce their specific commitment to undertake a global partnership to end child marriage. The campaign is entitled ‘Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage’.

It is estimated that in poor countries, a third of all girls are married by 18 and that this forces them out of school and exposes them to abuse. Mrs Robinson and her colleagues are committed to ending this practice in a generation.

Day three of the conference saw a return to this issue when both the plenary sessions and the workshops and smaller discussions focussed on the problems faced by women and girls. Business participants recounted their experience of having to negotiate through the cultural barriers to persuade fathers and tribal elders allow women and girls take up paid positions or set up small businesses which could then support them and their families.

One speaker detailed the back breaking work that women and girls in sub Sahara Africa undertake collecting water. Many walk for 10 miles a day over the most difficult terrain and in high temperatures carrying up to 20 kg of water on their heads.

This has an adverse impact on their health leading to arthritic diseases, miscarriages and back and chest pains. Women and girls who travel from their home also face grave risk of rape and assault.

Piping clean water to villages can reduce the threat and provide women and girls with the time to engage in education and other training programmes that can economically benefit both them and their communities.

The plight of 12 million people in Somalia, who are currently experiencing famine and drought, was also highlighted during the conference by Somali born poet and rapper K'naan. He had recently been to Somalia to see for himself the conditions in the camps and he brought back film of the scale of the problem which was shown at the CGI.

In two weeks President Clinton will be in Dublin to attend an economic conference organised by the Irish government. This blog will be there as well. It will be interesting to see how his belief in growing the economic rather than austerity measures will go down with an Irish government that is committed to cuts.

Honouring Irish America’s labour legacy

Joseph Smyth, mise and Terry O Sullivan


The first thing you notice when you get out of the car at the South Street Seaport in New York are the massive sailing ships. The Peking, built in 1911, with its four enormous masts and rigging is an impressive sight and dominates the landscape. And there are other sailing ships dating from even earlier times. The South Street Seaport sits on the site of the original port of New York and part of it is Pier 17.

That was my destination last Wednesday evening. Me and your man were on our way to Harbour Lights, a restaurant, where the Irish Echo was holding an event to honour Irish America’s labour legacy – Irish Labour 50.

The Pier is now a tourist centre and part of a designated historic area which includes a Museum, exhibition galleries, a working 19th-century print shop, an archeology museum, a maritime library, and much more, including a small fleet of privately owned sailing ships.

Harbour Lights looks out over the East river and at night is lit by the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The contribution of the Irish in America to the labour movement has been significant and the Irish Echo event was recognition of this. It was an opportunity to pay tribute to current labour leaders and activists, and for me to say thank them for their ongoing contribution to the peace process.



Kathleen Curtain from the Kingdom

The restaurant was packed to overflowing. Your man complained that he could not get a seat. I ignored him and went off to talk to Kathleen Curtain an old friend from Kerry who was amazingly magnanimous about Dublin’s victory over the Kingdom. I was also delighted to see Marian and Patti Reynolds. Great people all.

In my remarks I took the opportunity to extend warm greetings from Martin McGuinness and to assure the audience of his and Sinn Féin’s commitment to secure the right to vote in future Presidential elections for Irish citizens in the north and those living abroad.

The Irish involvement with the labour movement in the USA goes back over a 150 years. The period during and after the great hunger saw a huge influx of Irish and this gave a boost to efforts to organise working people.

Those Irish built the roads and canals, the sewers and the railroads, the buildings and the mines – the infrastructure of this vast new emerging United States of America. It was a hugely difficult time. Poverty and hardship were the common experience of millions of Irish. There was significant discrimination and I recalled a sign given to me some years ago which dates from that dark period and which declares, ‘No Irish Need Apply’.

Irish workers were not the only workers to face the challenges of exploitation and adversity. It was a time when workers had no rights. They were hired and fired by employers, who often had the power of life or death as witnessed in the oppression of the Molly Maguires.

The children of workers had no childhood and no future. They too worked from a young age. The great American writer Jack London described a child worker; ‘He did not walk like a man. He did not look like a man. He was a travesty of the human. It was a twisted and stunted and nameless piece of life that shambled like a sickly ape, arms loose-hanging, stoop shouldered, narrow-chested, grotesque and terrible.’

Trade Unions were the means by which working people could demand improvements in working conditions and wages. And the Irish helped establish many trade unions and worked hard to make them a success.




I reminded the audience that one of our greatest leaders James Connolly was a hugely influential trade union activist in the United States, as well as in Ireland. Connolly spent 7 years of his life here and he helped found and organise the ‘Independent Workers of the World’ and campaigned tirelessly for workers rights. He understood the importance of workers standing together, united against injustice and oppression.

And he articulated the connection between British colonialism and sectarianism in Ireland, and the importance of workers taking a stand against the British presence. He famously wrote: ‘The cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland; the cause of Ireland is the cause of Labour.’

He was prepared to put his life on the line in pursuit of his beliefs and in 1916 he was executed by the British for helping to lead the Easter Rising. But his death did not stop his ideas from taking root.

The Proclamation, which Connolly played a key role in writing, reflects his beliefs. It is a freedom charter. It guarantees religious and civil liberty and is avowedly anti-sectarian. It promotes equal rights and equal opportunities for all citizens. And at a time when women in most countries did not have the vote, the government of this new Republic was to be elected by the suffrages of all her men and women. The Proclamation is a declaration of social and economic intent for a rights based society in which the people are sovereign.

It is, as this blog has said many times, for Irish republicans today our mission statement for the 21st century.

There were also among the audience Labour leaders who have stood shoulder to shoulder with us in the peace process in Ireland. Their role and that of Irish America and especially of the Trade Unions, has been hugely influential and invaluable.

The fact is that there would be no peace process at this time in Ireland if the trade union movement had not been part of the Irish American lobby, which in the early 1990’s created the possibility of cessations and negotiations and agreements.
However, the great historic challenge facing the people of Ireland has yet to be resolved – British involvement in our country and the reunification of Ireland.

Uniting Ireland makes economic sense; it makes political sense; it makes common sense. And we need Irish America to stay with us as we seek to advance toward the achievement of this goal.



Thanking Terry for his help with the Peace Process

At the end of the speeches I had the honour to make a number of presentations. One especially was for the President of LiUNA – The Labourer’s International Union of North America.

I have known Terry O Sullivan, whose family are from Kerry, for many years now. He has been a good friend and supporter of the Irish peace process.

I had to leave early to go back to another event but it was clear from the boisterous banter that the labour activists and their families were intent on having a great night.

As we left your man was complaining again. This time it was because he was leaving. There is no pleasing some people.



With John Liu New York City Comptroller

THE PEOPLES’ PRESIDENT

Martin McGuinness has been my friend for almost 40 years. He is a remarkable and gifted human being and a great leader and a patriot. It will be a great honour for me to propose Martin McGuinness to contest Presidential election on a broad, republican, citizen-centred platform. He will make an excellent President of Ireland.

Ireland is a partitioned country. The consequences of that have been deeply damaging for the people of this island.

In the north a unionist one party regime ruled and abused citizens for 50 years. Unionist repression and a society in which Catholics were treated as second class citizens led to a civil rights campaign for justice. When that was attacked by the state there followed decades of conflict.

Martin McGuinness played a huge role in bringing that conflict to an end.
The southern state was run by a conservative political and business elite whose greed and corrupt practices ultimately led to the current dire economic crisis.
As a result there is now a climate of despair and of fear. Half a million are unemployed; thousands more face losing their homes; one third of our children are going without one or more of the basic necessities of life. This includes a warm coat in winter, a bed and bedding of their own, and three meals a day. And each day brings more news of job losses. This is unacceptable.

Never was there a more important time for republican politics. Never was there a greater need for a President who can represent all that is good and vital and compassionate and caring about the Irish people.

Ireland needs a Peoples President – a President who can bring hope; who can lift spirits and reach out to and embrace all the people fo this island.

A President who has the ability to break down barriers between people and who has the acknowledged experience to work with those of opposite opinions.

Martin is an outstanding political leader. First as Minister of the Education when he began the work of transforming education in the north, and then as Deputy Fiurst Minister Martin has worked closely with unionist leaders like Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson, building a partnership power sharing government which has defied the begrudgers and is delivering for citizens.

Martin has demonstrated enormous courage and taken a strong stand against those who would seek to plunge Ireland back into war.

He has travelled widely, ably representing the people of the north on the international stage. He knows many world leaders and is recognised by then as a capable and effective leader and representative.

Martin has a deserved international reputation as a peace maker. He is a statesman who has taken huge personal and political risks in his life.

As Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator during the peace process, time and again HE demonstrated immense personal leadership and an ability to persuade others to take decisions and initiatives which many thought impossible.

There would have been no peace process without his enthusiastic encouragement.

The next seven years will be enormously challenging for the people of this island.

Ireland needs a President who has a vision of a fairer, better and more prosperous Ireland.

A President who can represent every section of our society, nationalist and unionist, urban and rural, republican and loyalist, and those from the new immigrant community.

Martin will ensure that the Aras is a welcoming place for all sections of society across this island, and in particular for those who have been marginalized.

He is uniquely placed to reach out to the Irish diaspora and to engage with it in building a new Ireland.

Martin is for a new Republic which has citizens rights at its heart. He believes totally in the core republican values of equality and fairness.

He believes in people and community and in civic virtues. He has the ability to rise above the party political and to successfully represent all of the Irish people.

I am confident that he will build on the excellent work of President McAleese and her husband Martin.

And as we enter a period of unprecedented historic anniversaries, including the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, it would be especially important that we have a President who is committed to uniting Ireland and ensuring that the principles and values that are expressed in the Proclamation become a reality.

This is a time of great challenge for all the people of Ireland. We need positive but authentic leadership.

I believe that this election will give Martin the platform to continue the work which he has led in the North and in the peace process and to put it on a national footing.

If elected he will draw the average wage. He will dedicate himself to a genuine national reconciliation and the unity of our people. He will personify hope in the great genius and integrity of all the people of this island, Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters.

I would appeal, if Martin contests this election, for people to join in this campaign, including people in the North and across the diaspora who are denied a vote at this time. The campaign will give citizens the opportunity to make a stand for a better Ireland, for a united Ireland.

Remembering Friends

Todd Allen, John Fitzgerald, Tom McGinnis, Desi Macken, Gerry Adams, Larry Downes, Tom Boyan, John Kitrick

This blog has met the Irish everywhere. From Britain to Australia, from all parts of Europe, to the USA, from the Middle East to South Africa. Some have been first generation. Others have been the sons and daughters of previous generations forced from Ireland for economic and social and political reasons. Persecution, sectarianism, repression, hunger all played their part.

Among the 70 plus million in the Irish diaspora scattered around the globe there are many who take a deep interest in developments in Ireland. They seek to play a helpful role. Many times this is in small personal ways. Over recent decades they have positively contributed to the search for peace. This has been especially true of the Irish in America, Britain and Australia.

Friends of Sinn Féin in America was established in 1995. It raises funds for the party. It has done sterling work in that time. Consequently leading Shinners have travelled to all corners of the USA speaking at breakfast, brunch and dinner fundraisers and at many universities. We have addressed press conferences, met newspaper editorial boards, lobby groups and politicians at local, state and federal level, as well as the various Washington administrations under Clinton, Bush and Obama. We have also engaged with local Irish American communities and briefed them on the ongoing developments in the peace process.

In my travels around the USA I have met tens of thousands of very good, decent Irish Americans.

Frequently, in the early days of my travels I would be met at airports by Irish American police officers who would whizz me around New York and other cities, through rush hour traffic, with lights flashing and sirens blaring. I used to joke that it was for me a whole new experience of being driven round by police officers who weren’t intent on taking me to prison.

In New York the backbone of the fundraising project for FOSF is the construction industry, and the police and fire services. Others, including people who work in the financial district, the law, the pub and restaurant business, in community organisations and ordinary working men and women, have also been enormously helpful.

A frequent attender at our fundraisers was Fr. Mychal Judge, a Franciscan priest, who was well known in New York for his work among the homeless and aids victims. Mychal was chaplain to New York’s Firefighters. He was also close friend of Steven McDonald, a New York policeman now a quadriplegic, as a result of being shot. Steven is a strong opponent of violence and a firm believer in forgiveness.

Mychal and Steven both attended some of our New York events. They even travelled to Ireland and Parliament Buildings at Stormont to see the changes that their support for the peace process had helped bring about.

In 1999 I visited the Mercantile Exchange, the largest commodity futures exchange in the world, and then in the shadow of the twin towers. A group of FOSF activists, Todd, Fitzy and Tom arranged for me to see the place and watch the madness of the ‘bear pit,’ There scores of traders, buying and selling commodities, line 10 or more deep shouting at each other creating a cacophony of noise and excitement. How they understand what they were buying and selling is beyond me.

These three also organised a very successful fundraiser in the north tower of the World Trade Centre in the Windows on the World restaurant.

The restaurant was at the top of the tower, on the 107th floor. I remember looking out of the large windows. It was like being in a helicopter hovering high above New York. It was a spectacular panoramic view of New York and New Jersey, of the Hudson River, and the Statue of Liberty, and of Ellis island through which so many tens of thousands of Irish immigrants had entered the United States.

There were about 30 people there that day. Enjoying the craic, getting photos taken and talking about Ireland. Being captivated by Rita O Hare.

We also met security men and women, waiters, lift operators, and others. They were all warm decent human beings.



Mise with Tom McGinnis

Two years later the twin towers were gone and almost 3000 people were dead. Among them was Tom (McGinnis) one of the three who had organised our World Trade Centre event. Another to die was Mychal Judge. Hundreds of New York police officers and NYFD personnel died also, along with construction workers, many from Ireland.

I remember that day. Martin McGuinness and I had been meeting the Taoiseach in government buildings in Dublin. As we left the building we met US Special Envoy Richard Haas. The first reports were coming in but the detail was vague. Mark Costigan, a very good radio journalist was outside Government Buildings with the press pack. He had a new hi tech electronic gadget with a miniature TV. We heard him exclaiming and gathered around him to watch images of the planes hitting the Twin Towers.

It was like a scene from a film. Hard to take in. Then on the way north we listened on the car radio to Conor O Cleary’s eye witness account of what was happening. It was gripping and shocking and terrifying.

I immediately began to ring friends in New York trying to find out if any of those we knew were among the dead or injured. Like many others I spent several hours each day for several days doing this as the extent of the devastation and the scale of the deaths became clearer.

Two months later FOSF held its annual fundraising dinner in New York. It was agreed that the monies raised would go to help the families of the construction industry who were killed at the World Trade Centre. It was a small gesture of solidarity from Irish republicans in Ireland, and from Friends of Sinn Fein in the USA, to our friends in the construction industry who suffered grievously as a consequence of the attacks that autumn day in September 2001.

During that visit I called to a local Fire Station. The fire fighters talk with huge pride of their chaplain Mychal Judge. He had joined them in the inferno that was the Twin Towers. He died attending to them and the dead and injured. The Fire Fighters had a deep sense of gratitude to him.

There was also a deep sense of the huge courage and heroism of all those who rushed to help others caught up in the attacks in New York and Washington and the passengers of Flight 93 who confronted their hijackers.

September 11 is one of those watershed moments in human history. Its consequences are still with us today in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But on this tenth anniversary our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent who died. On Sunday I thought back on all this. I also thought of the time I visited Arlington cemetery with Courtney Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s daughter. She brought us to visit her father and her uncle’s graves.

Carved on the wall before Robert Kennedy’s grave are words he spoke in South Africa in the 1960s – visionary words in the history of that troubled land but words which speak to those who died trying to help their neighbours in the 9 /11 attacks or the 70 million Irish people throughout the world who make up our great diaspora and whose help and support we still need as we seek to advance our democratic goals of peace and unity and freedom for Ireland.

Robert Kennedy said: ‘It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope; and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.’

Suicide Prevention and Awareness

Sinn Féin banners outside Belfast's Waterfront Hall where the party will be holding its Ard Fheis this weekend.

Yesterday was the start of International Suicide Prevention Awareness Week. It runs until next Saturday, World Suicide Prevention Day.

Regrettably in my years as a public representative I have spoken to people at risk; to their families and the bereaved families of suicide victims; and to health professionals working on this issue. It is clear that this is a problem which is getting worse.

The World Health Organisation estimates that “Every year, almost one million people die from suicide; a "global" mortality rate of 16 per 100,000, or one death every 40 seconds”.

That’s equivalent to a population the size of Dublin dying each year from suicide.

WHO also calculates that in the last 50 years “suicide rates have increased by 60% worldwide”, and that it is now among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15-44 years.

Recently Pieta House, a suicide crisis centre based in Lucan, Dublin, reported that in the first half of this year it has seen a 40% increase in the number of people coming to it for help in respect of suicide and self-harm.

Pieta House said that 486 people - 386 men and 100 women - died by suicide in the south of Ireland last year.

In the north the situation is equally bad. The Public Health Agency (PHA) has reported that since 1999 rates of suicide there have increased by 64%. And in many instances these were deaths of young people, many of whom came from disadvantaged areas. North and West Belfast have been especially hard hit. In 2009 260 people died by suicide in the north.

A report last June by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) examined the connection between the economic recession and male suicide.

Facing the Challenge – The Impact of the Recession and Unemployment on Men’s Health in Ireland concluded that male suicide is on the increase as a result of the dire economic situation. It revealed that in the south 379 male suicides occurred in the year up to June 2009. The following year that number had risen by 48 to 427.

In the north the report said that there had been 240 male deaths by suicide in 2010. When combined with the 73 female suicides in that period the 313 deaths by suicide in the north for last year, was the worst figure ever for that region. It is an increase of 100 on the 2005 figure of 213 deaths by suicide.

There has also been a significant increase in the numbers of people self-harming, again particularly among young men.

One year ago Prof Kevin Malone of the School of Medicine and Medical Science at University College Dublin and St. Vincent’s University Hospital gave evidence on suicide to the Dáil Joint Committee on Health and Children. He explained that a study he carried out into suicide in 23 countries concluded that suicide levels are significantly higher than the official statistics suggest.

It is easy to get lost in the statistics and to forget that this is an issue of life and death for hundreds of citizens and of huge trauma to many families.

The reality is that suicide prevention needs more resources, more money and more trained personnel than ever before. How to organise and put in place preventative strategies is well known.

What is required is a properly funded all-island based multi-agency intervention approach which brings together training and support for family doctors; a public information campaign; and a co-ordinated strategy involving all of those who are working on this issue in community, the voluntary sector and the health professionals.

At a time of cutbacks in health budgets it makes sense that the two health departments co-operate in providing effective and efficient health services for citizens.

The failure by the health service in the south to meet the psychiatric needs of young people has been highlighted in recent days by 17 year old Cíara Molloy from Dublin who in desperation wrote an open letter to the Dublin Minister of Health James Reilly.

Cíara suffers from depression and anxiety and has difficulties with food. In her letter she begs the Minister for help, describing the state’s current psychiatric care for teenagers as a “disgrace”.

Her decision to go public came after she was told that instead of an appointment with a psychologist she was being offered a place on a six week lecture course dealing with ‘stress control’. The course is entitled: “Think Clearer. Learn to control your eating. And control your drinking.”

Ciara told one journalist: “I’m 17 and I don’t drink.”

“I just broke down crying then,” she said. “The HSE were saying that they do not care.”

Cíara published her open letter on her blog and emailed it also to the Department of Health, the HSE and some media outlets.

In her letter she wrote:

“An Open Letter to Minister James Reilly, TD:

Dear Minister Reilly
My name is Cíara Molloy, and I am a 17 year old teenager. For the last few years, I have struggled with anxiety and depression. My local hospital, Connolly Hospital, was unable to treat me, as they didn’t have the funds or manpower to do so. Nor were they able to let me see a dietician for my difficulties with food. Instead, I’ve languished on a waiting list for over a year.
Thanks to my GP, I have been sent a letter by my local primary care team, to attend a ‘stress control’ course. This is not helpful in the slightest. To my mind, this course and letter is simply a way for the HSE to wash their hands of me. The course itself isn’t suitable for me, because, as the letter states, it ‘is NOT group therapy’. Secondly, it is on a Wednesday morning from 10 – 11.30. Minister, I am going into sixth year, and wish to study Law in college. I cannot afford to take that much time off school, because by the time I get out of the course, go home, get my schoolbag and get the bus to school, it will be 1.30.
Minister, I am begging you to help me. Nobody else seems to want to, and the HSE appear to have washed their hands of me. Psychiatric care for teenagers in this country is a disgrace. There are no facilities. Unless you’ve attempted suicide, you can’t even be seen by a counsellor. How is this fair?
I cannot afford to see a private counsellor. I can’t afford to see a private dietician. Is the HSE simply going to let me rot because of my socio-economic class? I thought Ireland looked after its people.
Yours sincerely,
Cíara Molloy,
Dublin 15
Visit Cíara’s blog, Messy Desk, Messy Head”

Finally, let me take this opportunity to commend the amazing dedication and work of all those involved in suicide prevention. Many of these are bereaved families who have known the personal tragedy of loss. Their courage and determination is inspirational.