The Government has published a ten-year strategy to try to reduce the suicide rate in Ireland.
The strategy will target specific groups such as young men, prisoners and the unemployed. As part of the initiative, a National Office for Suicide Prevention is to be established.
Almost 500 people take their own lives in Ireland each year, and a further 11,000 cases of deliberate self-harm are treated in hospitals.
The Tánaiste and Minister for Health, Mary Harney, said suicide was now a very serious issue in society and there was no single intervention or approach to deal with it.
New services to treat deliberate self-harm are to be developed in hospital A&E departments.
The strategy puts the direct, indirect and human cost of suicide and attempted self-harm at over €864 million a year.
