In 2005, the bodies of 29-year-old Sharon Grace and her two young children, three-yearold Abby and four-year-old Mikahla were found in the River Slaney in Co Wexford.

Sharon had tried to access social services on the night before she died, but none was available to her.

What drives someone like Sharon Grace to decide that the best option available to her is not exist anymore and that her children should go with her? Why was Eileen Murphy left to cope alone in a distressed state last Tuesday, a day that, for her remaining family, ended in unbearable tragedy?

In 2005, 430 people committed suicide in this country. In the same year, 396 people died on the roads. We invest millions every year in policing our roads and making them safe to reduce the number of people who die in traffic accidents, and yet we pay lip service to suicide prevention and mental health in Ireland.

Last week in this paper, Mary and Michael Clarke told the story of how their battle to get their intellectually gifted son Niall help for his psychiatric condition ended in a fruitless search for treatment. Niall is now in a US jail awaiting sentence for an armed robbery. His parents hope that he will get help in prison for his illness.

The Clarkes spoke of how they would get Niall to a point where he would agree to get treatment, only to be told that there was no place for him and help was not available.

The Clarkes' story is a common one, and the more than 400 families left bereaved by suicide every year might even say that, because he is still alive, they are the lucky ones. How can we possibly expect the figures to be any different when our mental-health facilities in this country are woefully under-resourced? Almost half of all people who end up in A&E because they have attempted suicide are sent home without even a psychiatric examination or any offer of aftercare.

If you take a look at the website of the Department of Health and Children, it will tell you that if you are experiencing anxiety or depression, you should make your GP your first port of call. The almost chirpy advice goes on to say that if you need to see a psychiatrist, an "appointment will usually occur within a few weeks of referral or, in an emergency, an immediate appointment can be arranged." So the already frazzled and overworked GP gets to decide if the situation is an emergency? If he or she deems it to be less urgent, the patient has to wait for "a few weeks" before being seen.

In the case of Niall Clarke, his parents were acutely aware that his condition needed urgent attention. They did everything in their power to get him looked after, but there was no one there to help. Sharon Grace cried out for assistance on the night before she died with her two children but again, there was no one there to help.

While the reasons our suicide rate amongst the young is the fifth highest in Europe are difficult to fathom, surely it is not hard to see that if the support services aren't there, nothing will improve? For someone who is depressed or suicidal, taking the first step of going to his or her doctor is a mammoth one. To be then told that they will have to wait for "a few weeks" to be seen by the psychiatrist is a terrible blow.

We are entering into election time, and as a precursor to the inevitable knocking on doors, Fianna Fáil wheeled out the National Development Plan to show us how good they are at spending money. They can tell us about all of the shiny new roads and the new trains and housing that they plan to spend our money on, but what use is it to all of those people for whom there was no professional available for them to turn to in their darkest hour?

We, as a country, are becoming progressively wealthier and more sophisticated. But what this also means is that those on the edges of our society, those who can't keep up with the pace, get increasingly marginalised. Our government, which has been in place now for 10 financially meteoric years, still hasn't managed to sort out what is really important in a society - the very fabric of it.

Last week, the Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, opened the country's first centre for the prevention of suicide and selfharm. The new centre, Pieta House in Lucan in Dublin, is a voluntary organisation. It is funded through borrowing, fundraising and donations from the ESB and the National Lottery, with less than 10% coming from the Health Service Executive. So not only, shamefully for this government, is the centre Ireland's first, it is also only in existence because donors and volunteers decided to take matters into their own hands.

Mary Harney said at the launch that it was the type of project she would like to see in other places where there is huge voluntary input.

This is simply not good enough. Relying on donations and fundraising to set up centres where people who are in the midst of untold mental suffering can go is just not acceptable.

Let's not forget that this is the government which sanctioned a Euro57m spend on a crock e-voting system which costs a fortune every month to keep wrapped in dust sheets. It's the same government that sees fit to allocate just Euro1.8m in a year to spend on suicide prevention.

When will the penny finally drop that something urgently has to be done about the provision of mental health services? Will it happen now Eileen Murphy and her son Evan are laid to rest in their home county of Cork? Or will it be, as I expect, not until long after we witness many more tragedies similar to that visited on those who loved Eileen and Evan last Tuesday afternoon at the Cliffs of Moher?