Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY has said that his fellow Irishmen tend to “suffer in silence” and find it difficult to reach out and get help for depression or suicidal thoughts.
He was speaking at the Irish Association of Suicidology (IAS) annual conference in Westport, Co Mayo. Keynote speaker Dr Paul Quinnett, CEO of the QPR Institute for Suicide Prevention in the US, noted that women were more likely to be treated for a mental health issue because they will speak to friends or family or seek professional help.
Men, however, still feel keenly a stigma “attached to both needing help and looking for it”, said the Taoiseach. Speaking of men, he said:
For us though, we tend to suffer in silence, or stubbornness. Mortified, we hope it’ll be grand, next week, or next month, or next year, when it will all go away. Only it won’t.That is why it is absolutely vital that the health service continue to work with voluntary groups so that the men in this country, many of them in physical and social isolation, can start to come in from the cold. And start to take care of their mental health.
He said that the Government was supporting suicide prevention by doubling funding for the National Office for Suicide Prevention from €4m in 2011 to almost €9m in 2014.
Kenny also highlighted the issue of depression and suicide among young people, of both genders, who he said are forced to inhabit “a world of ‘likes’, thumbs-up, followers, favourites”. He said that they were expected – and expecting – “to be impossibly thin, impossibly cool, impossibly talented, impossibly beautiful, impossibly rich and impossibly famous – at the risk of being impossibly damaged”.
Labour senator Lorraine Higgins was also speaking on the topic in the Seanad this week, calling for a suicide prevention and awareness programme to be introduced for post-primary students. Just over 15 out of 100,000 people between the ages of 15 and 24 years take their own life in Ireland every year.
Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan said it would be possible for a short course of suicide awareness to be integrated into the time demands of the Junior Cert cycle, but stopped short of saying that it would be up to the Department to make it part of the curriculum. She said: “It is open to any NGO, interested stakeholders, or even a local school to develop a short course in order to fulfill the commitments of the Junior Cycle Framework.”
The HSE National Office for Suicide Prevention published its 2013 report yesterday. It found that funding local community groups and local programmes focusing on suicide was vital, as was promoting mental health across workplaces, schools, colleges, prisons and other institutions.
The National Suicide Research Foundation (NSRF) found that 11,061 cases of self-harm were recorded in hospitals around the country. That is a slight decrease of 6% on 2012, but four out of five patients with a history of five or more incidents of self-harm were repeatedly engaged in harming themselves.
Helplines
Samaritans 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org
Console 1800 247 247 – (suicide prevention, self-harm, bereavement)
Aware 1890 303 302 (depression anxiety)
Pieta House 01 601 0000 or email mary@pieta.ie - (suicide, self-harm, bereavement)
Teen-Line Ireland 1800 833 634 (for ages 13 to 19)
Childline 1800 66 66 66 (for under 18s)
Please journal..can ye wait till Halloween is a memory before posting photos of the big red fella…
Santa will always work for free anyway, his contract is close to the 0hours contracts also, Sc** that bought this company and sold it off straight away for a profit! Which the government allowed and put all these people out of work before Christmas! REMEMBER WHEN VOTING THIS YEAR LAB/ FG DURING THEIR TIME IN GOVERNMENT 5YEARS THEY PUT NO PROTECTION FOR WORKERS RIGHTS AND STILL HAVE NOT!
Spot on Joe.
It’s worth reminding people that the asset strip of this landmark store was another example of the Irish state protecting the interests of domestic and international capital over the welfare of the majority citizens as it has always done.
The sellers Gordon Brothers manipulated the corporate and legal structures for the efficient asset stripping the company. This involved separating the operations side of the business (OCS Operations) from the valuable property (OCS Properties).
OCS properties was making substantial profits on the back of OCS operations which was loss making as it was required to pay €300, 000 a month rental to it’s sister company OCS properties. If the 2 companies were not deliberately separated then there is no rent payable and the business is viable. It’s a neat little corporate ruse designed to allow the asset stripping of the company, exactly as occurred.
The operations business was then liquidated leaving the employees and creditors with little or nothing while the property is then sold for a massive profit. The statutory redundancy for the workers of course will be paid for by the state as the vultures swagger off with the loot.
The buyers Natrium have also sorted out their tax affairs and use hedge funds based in tax havens like Cayman and Guernsey so that they can avoid making any contribution to the society and workers that they prey on.
Meanwhile insiders like KPMG work for both sides and acts as liquidators on one hand and auditor for the buyers Cheyne Capital Management on the other. Cheyne Capital Management is one half of the joint venture Natrium which also consists of D2 Private owned coincidentally by a former KPMG employee. KPMG executed the sale at 2.30 am on the Friday morning just in time to avoid paying over the estimated €2 million owed to the concession holders.
This ransacking of the company, employees and the citizens was all perfectly legal as the law designed largely to protect the interests of capital and represses the working class.
Wally, people stopped shopping there, it’s really that simple. The store never moved with the times. Massive footfall bypassed the store everyday, they let themselves become irrelevant.
Ho Ho Ho
No Scarce. As already explained, Clerys was profitable as a single entity.
OCS properties which owned the building made a profit of around €5 million between August 2012 and January 2014 which equals the €300k monthly rental figure it received from OCS operations over the period. OCS operations made a loss €2 million during the same period.
If the 2 companies are combined as they originally were, then that leaves a net profit of €3 million.
Separating the property was the root cause of the subsequent business losses, exactly as planned in the asset strip.
Would you mind asking Santa if he could fix the time on Clearys clock before he heads off. It will nearly be showing the correct time when the clocks go back this weekend.
Everyone knows the Santas in shops & shopping Centres are an army of Santa’s cousins who help him out. It’s part of his magic.
I would love to go, Just one question everyone should ask themselves….Does the proceeds from this Santa go to any of the companies/People that had any hand at all on closing this store and more importantly showing little regard to its staff? A confirmation of this one way or the other will allow me to make a conscious decision to bring my little fella or not!
I doubt very much the workers will get a penny from this Santa. Unless they set one up beside the Clerys Santa. Calling themselves the original Clerys Santa
I will avoid it like the plague to show solidarity with the Clerys workers
In the same way that idiots suggested boycotting the best pop up store after clerks collapse. You know the one that was trying to keep Best concession staff from clerys in work by liquidating their stock! Solidarity is a strange thing sometimes. Either that or you do t understand the word
dunnes do a better one
O my, Sant has a shaft in one hand and a bell end in the other, who choose that photo??? lol.
All the anti-Semites can gather there and it will be easy for the Gardai to monitor their activities.
Wrong blog.
Is Santa anti Semite?
I’d sooner see Satan!
have your say