Reaction:Minister for Health Mary Harney said yesterday she was not certain any out-of-hours service could have prevented the tragedy which occurred last weekend in Monageer.
"I honestly believe that every eventuality could not be avoided just because you have particular services at a particular time," she said.
Speaking to journalists in Dublin, she said everybody was stunned by what happened.
"Firstly can I say this is a terrible tragedy within a family. I think everybody is stunned by the scale of the tragedy. And quite honestly I'm not certain that any out-of-hours service could have avoided what happened. I don't know is the answer," she said.
"A number of well-respected figures in authority were involved over the weekend in various aspects of this matter and I think we have to await further information, and in particular an independent investigation," she added.
"Obviously we always have general practitioner services, we have hospital services, we have emergency powers that the Garda Síochána have and so on, but notwithstanding all of that, terrible tragedies do occur and this is one of them," she continued.
Ms Harney added that this was not to say there should not be appropriate services but this was "a very, very unusual case, a highly unusual case" and she felt it unwise to speculate on what should or should not happen in future until all the facts were known.
She did not accept that lessons had not been learned from the Sharon Grace case. "I mean there are emergency services available . . . In a different part of the country children were taken away from a family with court orders and so on and I remember members of the media asking me was it not heavy-handed," she said.
Tim O'Malley, Minister of State for Health, said the Government could not give a date for the provision of 24-hour mental health services. It had not yet been costed.
Asked on Newstalk radio if he thought that was good enough, he said: "Obviously nothing is good enough and nothing I say or anyone else can say can help those who were involved in this terrible tragedy."
He said the National Office for Suicide Prevention, set up 18 months ago, was looking at best practice in the area.
"The office of suicide prevention is working very diligently to work it out exactly and make sure that what we lay out for an after-hours service will be the correct one," he said. "We are spending over a billion a year in mental health services. I know it's not enough, I agree it's not enough, but it's a huge amount of money," he added.