Suicide prevention programmes aimed at individuals and communities were urgently needed in the State, the head of a child suicide bereavement service said at a conference on children's issues in Limerick yesterday.
Ms Ros McCarthy, head of Solas, Barnardos bereavement service for child suicide, said that, at a conservative estimate, 15 per cent of Irish adolescents contemplated suicide. Between 1994 and 2000, there had been two suicides in the five- to nine year age group, 25 in the 10- to 14-year group and 251 in the 15- to 19-year group. "There were 413 suicides last year; 47 of those were under 19," she said.
She was speaking at the fourday International Forum on Child Welfare world forum, which is being hosted by Barnardos at the University of Limerick.
Ms McCarthy said New Zealand, which, with 3.9 million people, had a similar population to the Republic's, had declining suicide rates since 1995 after suicide prevention programmes were introduced.
"I think the Government needs to commit to suicide prevention in youth," she said. School-based mental health programmes and the promotion of help-seeking behaviour among young people were examples of population-based initiatives.
But programmes aimed at the early identification of people with risk factors such as through the creation of outreach teams should be devised.
On Tuesday, Ms Lisa Woll, a senior policy adviser with Plan International, a development agency, said Irish children faced continuous challenges despite the implementation of much of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The republic had a high rate of child poverty, "a consistently poor record relative to other European Union countries".