Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Your correspondent has returned to his rural base after spending a most enjoyable evening in the White House. No, not the one on Pennsylvania Avenue. It's the poetic public house on the corner of O'Connell Street and Glentworth Street in Limerick City we're talking about here. This particular premises has much to recommend it but there's one aspect that's especially noteworthy in these days of omnipresent Premiership football and non-stop Sky News: it does not have a television. Conversation, unadulterated, is what the place encourages. And what splendid talk we had. Guest of honour for the occasion was the charming Dervala (late of Limerick and currently of New York City), the proprietoress of that most literate of blogs, dervala.net. Limerick residents Mary and Tony O'Brien added the necessary salt, pepper and perspective to our ramblings.

We all raised our glasses to Dervela for helping staff the Manhattan Samaritan phone lines on Christmas Day. While the rest of us were tucking into turkey and trifle she was listening to the despair of those who have no one to talk to on the day when so many are surrounded by family and friends. For those who are alone and lonely, that anonymous, comforting voice on the other end of the line might be one thing that prevents them from ending it all, there and then.

Inevitably, our conversation led to the topic of suicide. Why "inevitably"? Well, suicide is now the most common cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds in Ireland. And, according to the National Suicide Review Group, the highest rate of suicide over the past five years has been among young men. To put this in context, the majority of those at our table were able to cite personal experience of this alarming statistic through relationship to someone who had taken his life. Coincidentally, in Monday's Irish Times, Marese McDonagh wrote about the tiny village of Dromahair in County Leitrim, where three families have been affected by suicide. McDonagh told of seven young people who had killed themselves; an astounding figure, given that the population of the county is just 26,000. In a praiseworthy move, the Dromahair families are organizing a conference entitled "Suicide: Prevention and Awareness", which will be held at the Abbey Manor Hotel in the village on 18 and 19 February. Among the speakers will be Dr John Connolly, secretary of the Irish Association of Suicidology and the broadcaster Gareth O'Callaghan, who has written a book, A Day Called Hope, about his battle with depression.

Was our evening in the White House dismal? No way. It's just that all of us who have been spared depression and who can laugh and enjoy an evening in the White House should be prepared to reach out to those who suffer its horrors. Just as Dervala does.