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A LEADING suicide prevention campaigner has claimed Government is effectively treating the tragedies as “second-class deaths” by failing to provide adequate funding to combat the crisis. Noel Smyth, chairman of the Turning the Tide of Suicide (3Ts) organisation, made the allegation after figures revealed 527 people officially died by suicide in Ireland last year, a 24% annual increase, and the highest level recorded in this country. A NEW organisation for parents bereaved by the death of a baby, either during or soon after pregnancy, is to hold its first support meeting later this month. THE life expectancy for men in the Travelling community is just 61 years — the same as it was more than two decades ago, a major report warned yesterday. This is 15 years less than men in the general population, signalling a widening gap since the last study into the health of the Travelling community in 1987, the Department of Health report revealed. “This is equivalent to the life expectancy of the general population in the 1940s,” according to the all-island study, which also involved researchers from UCD and Northern Ireland. HUNGARY’S FAR-RIGHT Jobbik party has called for “anti-social” members of the Roma community to be forced from their homes and placed in special guarded camps, as France comes under increasing scrutiny over its drive to send gypsies back to the Balkans. Jobbik’s claim that Hungary’s large Roma minority is riddled with criminals and benefit fraudsters has struck a chord with many people. SUICIDE PREVENTION campaigners have urged the Government to dramatically increase the funding allocated to support services aimed at reducing the number of people taking their own lives. Figures published earlier this year show a record 527 people died by suicide last year, a 24 per cent increase over the previous year. On Wednesday, the Government announced it was allocating an additional €1 million to suicide prevention groups, bringing the overall spend on these services to €5.5 million. Traveller men are now living 15 years less than men in the general population, a new study has found. The All Ireland Traveller Health study, which took three years to complete and encompassed over 10,500 Traveller families across the whole island, was jointly funded by health departments on both sides of the Border. The study found that Traveller men live on average to the age of 61.7, a life expectancy equivalent to Irish males in 1945. MEN and women in the Traveller community are dying much younger than the general population, with males dying an average of 15 years earlier than their settled counterparts. According to the All-Ireland Traveller Health Study, more than 36,000 Travellers live in this country but many still face discrimination and difficulties with their health. The study would help shape future services and policies for helping the ethnic community, according to Health Minister Mary Harney who launched the research yesterday. Irish ExaminerGarda Conor Egan yesterday told Cork District Court gardaí responded to a call to the laneway leading from the Blackrock Inn to Skehard Road and encountered Patrick O’Donoghue, aged 23, who became abusive in his language.
“There were members of the public present on the laneway present at the time and he shouted, ‘I’m going to come back tomorrow and put a bullet in everyone’s head’,” Garda Egan testified. The leader of Australia’s resources-rich western province has been accused of ‘another invasion’ by forcibly acquiring coastal land slated for return to native tribes to build a gas plant. Colin Barnett, premier of Western Australia state, said he had started formal proceedings to take the land for Woodside’s Browse liquefied natural gas precinct at James Price Point. The Kimberley region site technically belongs to the government but two Aboriginal tribes have lodged competing native title cases for the land, claiming ancestral rights dating back to before white settlement in 1788. IRISH PRIMARY schools are still among the most overcrowded in Europe, with Department of Education figures showing that over 106,000 pupils are in classes of 30 or more, up from 93,000 last year. This means that one in five primary schoolchildren are in classes of 30 pupils or over. The figures also show that some 8,000 children are still being educated in classrooms of 35 pupils or more. |
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