Irish President hails work of Samaritans

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese was the special guest at the Samaritans Irish Regional Conference in Portrush at the weekend.

The event was hosted by the Coleraine and District Branch, and saw delegates from across the Province coming together.

In her opening speech, the President thanked the huge community of Samaritan volunteers saying: " I would like to thank each one for all they do, so quietly each day to put hope and help between individuals and suffocating despair."

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The theme of the conference was 'Something to Live For' and speakers included Dr Mike Shooter, Chair of the Mental Heath Foundation, Denis Bradley a former Vice Chair of the Policing Board, Liz Steffan, a former member of the Coleraine branch, who has since moved to Spain, where she has helped set up branches there for ex-pats, and Portush man Ian Elliot CEO of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in Ireland.

During her speech, President McAleese looked back at the start of the charity, and praised how the Samaritans had become a lifeline for so many people in Ireland.

"We can count the number of phone calls, or individuals talked to, or volunteers trained or hours spent on phones, or funds raised - those statistics would amaze us in themselves, for they would reveal a desperate level of need which might never have been met if you had not been there.

"What the statistics can not tell us is the litany of sadness, self-doubt, mental illness, bereavement, grief, guilt, relationship breakdown, job loss, sickness, pressure, stress or anxiety that drives human beings into such dreadful pain. "But somewhere, somehow the name of the Samaritans comes to them and they make that call," said the President.

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She went on: "To be the person who answers that call confers a huge responsibility. You have to help that person see for themselves that there is something to live for.

"It is a big ask, and yet over 2,000 volunteers in Ireland regularly do just that.

"They invest their time and their qualities of care and compassion so that complete strangers and their families can know the joy of life beyond desperation and avoid the awful relentless bereftness that is the consequence so often of suicide.

"I hope that this work brings each one of you a deep personal fulfillment that comes from helping a human being to discover that he or she has indeed something to live for.

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"I know too that you will at times take home with you a shared grief, an intense and personal loss when the battle is not successful even with the best will and help in the world.

"Few of us are strong all the time, many of us over the course of a lifetime will encounter a period or circumstance which will make us feel vulnerable and fragile. How we cope with those times, how we use the help available can often reveal to us a strength we doubted that we had.

"The weak and the fragile can paradoxically often become or help us to become the strong and the resilient. Leonard Cohen expressed it beautifully in one of his songs:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in

"The Samaritans have been ringing bells for over 50 years and through your work a huge amount of light has managed to get in.

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"May your efforts ensure that the light is there, ever faithful, ever ready to dispel the darkness that gathers too often in human hearts and minds and blinds us to the fact that there is always, after all, something to live for."

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