Last Friday night, as you'll have read many times by now, Fr Redmond, of Poulpeasty, Co Wexford, paid a visit to Adrian Dunne and Ciara O'Brien, the woman Adrian had married, almost without her knowledge, in a surprise wedding on new year's eve 2005.

The reason for Fr Redmond's visit to the couple, in their house in Monageer, is well known.

Earlier that day, they had gone to an undertaker in New Ross to make funeral arrangements for themselves and their two children, Shania and Leanne, who, at that point, had barely 100 months on earth between them. The arrangements . . . in all their misspelled and badly punctuated infamy . . . are also familiar by now.

Liverpool jersies featured prominently; the music . . . Gerry and the Pacemakers, Guns 'N' Roses . . . was chosen, as was the shape and colour of the headstone if, for any reason, all of the family members were to die together.

The funeral directors were understandably disturbed by this determined display of advance planning. One hesitates to put thoughts in anybody's head, or to claim to know the rhythm and flow of their working day, but it's reasonable to assume that making funeral arrangements for living, breathing, fun-loving children is not part of the daily grind of undertakers in New Ross, or anywhere else for that matter.

This could have been an eccentric request, one almost in bad taste, or it could have been a cry for help.

The undertakers in question . . .

Cooney's of Robert Street . . . did the right thing. They assumed the worst and informed the authorities about this worrying visit to their place of business.

The authorities in question were local gardai, who responded (and I hope I'm not being unfair here) with the same lack of urgency that bedevils local gardai in much of the rest of the country. It was not until almost 24 hours later that they informed the Health Service Executive of what had happened in Cooneys'. In the meantime, they contacted Fr Redmond, who had a previous acquaintance with the family. "I had concerns from a third party and I still had concerns when I left, " Fr Redmond said after the four dead bodies of the Dunnes were discovered on Monday afternoon.

Acting on those concerns, he contacted another priest, Fr William Cosgrave, the parish priest of Monageer, who visited the house over last weekend but did not gain entry. It was not until 2pm on Monday, almost three days after Adrian and Ciara Dunne walked into Cooney's funeral home to plan the funerals of their children, that anybody from An Garda Siochana or the HSE knocked on the door of the Dunne family home in Monageer.

By then the Dunnes were dead.

"In hindsight, things might have been done differently, " the head of the garda press office Kevin Donohoe said subsequently. "Hindsight is a great thing." Such flippancy in one so experienced. . .

Effectively, what happened last weekend in Wexford was that the duty of care that the state has to its most vulnerable citizens was fobbed off on the Catholic church in the form of Frs Redmond and Cosgrave, who had no statutory power in the matter at all. This is not a criticism of those men. Fr Redmond spent two hours with the Dunnes on the Friday night, talking to them, asking them about their bizarre visit to the funeral home, trying to establish their frame of mind, their mood and their intentions. By his own admission, he was as concerned after that meeting as he was beforehand. Hence he contacted Fr Cosgrave, who (and again no criticism is intended) was as unequipped to deal with this developing tragedy as any other member of the clergy would have been.

In Ireland in 2007, the realisation must sink in soon that in the tricky area of mental health, we cannot avoid the worst by relying on the soothing and persuasive powers of a priest having a chat over a cup of tea and a Club Milk.

It is a job for properly trained people working in properly funded services which exist on the basis that the increase in mental breakdown and the accompanying rise in suicide is one of the country's biggest problems.

There is no such urgency in government, and perhaps no great tumult in the wider community either. Some voices last week were inclined to the view, as expressed by one GAA journalist on the radio, that the state can't be holding people's hands every step of the way.

This might be described as a peculiarly Progressive Democrat view, in which the state is an enemy which should get involved in the lives of its citizens only rarely, if ever. "I honestly believe that every eventuality could not be avoided just because you have particular services at a particular time, " Mary Harney said last week, responding to a widespread belief that the HSE runs its mental health services on the basis that, like consultants, the suicidal operate only Monday to Friday.

Well, let us introduce these particular services at these particular times and see what happens. Not having them doesn't seem to be working very well, as the extended Dunne and O'Brien families will tell you, and as the family of Sharon Grace will also testify, having lost Sharon and her two children in similar circumstances to the Dunnes two years ago.

Harney might be right to suggest that some things happen with no warning, but by no stretch of the imagination can it be said that no flags were raised in this case.

Making funeral arrangments for pre-school children is by any definition a cry for help but unfortunately for the Dunnes, the agents of the state who might have helped them weren't able enough, engaged enough or available enough to do the necessary work.

Instead, the task of coping with a disintegrating family was left to a pair of distressed undertakers and two out of their depth priests.

Maybe Mary Harney wasn't making an idelological point after all.

Maybe she's just in denial about what her health service has become.