Pat Buckley

Overall sentiment: -0.00
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I thank Deputy Clarke for tabling this motion and all the speakers, including the Government speakers, who contributed to the debate on this very sensitive subject. I thank the Mental Health Commission for its work. I welcome the opportunity to again address the House on the topic of mental health services, having first done so back in 2016. I am sad that there has been very little change in the ten years since. We tell those suffering with their mental health to seek help but that help is not always there. I know this myself. Colleagues may know that I lost two brothers to suicide. It has been a while and I still do not know how my mam, brothers and sisters deal with it. That pain is always there but nobody talks about it. Many emergency departments do not currently have suicide crisis assessment nurses, as several speakers have noted. I want to be clear that I do not blame the staff, who spend years training for this work. They have been totally let down by the system and by the Government. It is a system that undervalues them, overworks them and does not listen to them. That has been going on for years. I spoke about it ten years ago. In the brief time remaining, I will talk about the people who are left behind after a loved one's suicide. It is absolutely harrowing. The Government is not opposing the Bill but I will give the Minister of State a very quick synopsis in the 26 seconds I have. When my brothers died, the coroner's reports were crap, the HSE service was crap and how everybody dealt with death was crap. An Garda Síochána and all the emergency services were amazing, in fairness, but we never got counselling. We have moved on from that but the point I am making is that I do not want to be here in another ten years repeating myself. We do not want to have to keep talking about this. We need to improve the services and we must do it now.

Sentiment score: -0.00