The Minister for Education, Mr Martin, said he was concerned that as much advice and support as possible should be available from his Department for schools which have suffered traumatic events such as suicide. Mr Martin, responding to a survey carried out by ASTI, the secondary teachers' union. said one in eight second-level principals had reported a student committing suicide in recent years. A major complaint was the inadequacy of the schools psychological service.
In a statement yesterday Mr Martin said the National Task Force on Suicide report was at an advanced stage and would be published shortly.
While suicide is still a rare event, the survey provided additional information about how traumatic it was for school friends and teachers, said Mr Martin.
Meanwhile, the Fine Gael spokesman on education, Mr Richard Bruton, said the extent of the problem among young people was greater than had been realised. There were clear deficiencies in the capacity of schools to mount effective preventive strategies, and it was also clear that there was no coherent response programme to help schools cope properly with the trauma after such a tragic event.
The Minister must develop and provide resources for a proper strategy to deal with this problem at both the preventive and response stages, Mr Bruton said.