A pilot service has been established to reduce the delay in responding to people at risk of suicide once they present at their family doctor.
The service will be available to 180,000 people living in southeast Dublin over the next three years and may be extended to other areas.
In future GPs in the area who see patients who are suicidal will be able to immediately contact a suicide-crisis assessment nurse on a mobile telephone to discuss care of the patient.
Dr Paul Moran, a consultant psychiatrist at the Cluain Mhuire Service in Blackrock, who will supervise the project, said: "Depending on the particular circumstances, an assessment is arranged for as soon as possible . . .
"The nurse could arrange to go and see the patient within hours depending on the circumstances."
He said nurses specially trained in assessment of suicide crisis and parasuicide would go in pairs to assess patients. They would have the back-up of an on-call psychiatrist.
"The initial assessment then will lead to whatever services the patient needs and the whole idea is that patients would be linked to services appropriate to their problem as quickly as possible."
The overall aim of the service was to reduce the risk of suicide by reducing the delay in responding to patients in need and to improve accessibility to mental health services.
"In addition to reducing suicide, we hope to also identify unmet mental health needs," he said.
It is the first such service aimed at providing a rapid response to suicide crises in primary care.
There are already nurses addressing suicide prevention in a number of A&E units.
The service will be available from Monday to Friday from 1pm to 9pm, which, from a previous audit of referrals, tends to be the time of maximal referral.
The initiative, costing €75,000 a year, has been funded by the National Office for Suicide Prevention.
Dr Moran said the important issues in suicide prevention were outside mental health and have to do with important social factors such as alcohol and drugs and a reduction of lethal means.
"But it's also, hopefully, possible to improve the response to people in suicidal crisis at different levels and this initiative is at primary-care level," Dr Moran added.