The announcement that €12m of the €35m allocated to mental health this year would be spent on other services has angered many mental health advocates.

Yesterday, the Health Minister Leo Varadkar confirmed the changes and said the full allocation will be restored in 2017.

The news came as a parish priest in Laois spoke about the tragedy of eight suicides in the county in the space of just a month.

Conor Cusack, an ambassador for Mental Health, says that suicide is a massive reality in this country.

He said: “For men our age our greatest chance of dying is not from heart disease, not from cancer, a car crash or a gangland murder, our greatest chance of dying is from our own hands through suicide.

“As all the stats show, it’s a massive reality in the lives of our people that we try to keep in the shadows.”