Almost 1,000 calls were made to Samaritans every day last year, according to a new report.
The charity, which offers emotional support around the clock to anyone who is in distress, lonely, struggling to cope or feeling suicidal, also answered more than 2,500 calls each month last year from in-cell telephony systems in Irish prisons.
The Samaritans Ireland Impact Report 2025 also found that 1,200 festival goers contacted them while attending a festival last year. In total, the charity’s 1,500 volunteers answered roughly 345,000 calls last year.
Executive director of Samaritans Ireland, Sarah O’Toole, said “answering 1,000 calls a day shows the scale of need for a listening ear, and the difference that human connection can make to someone who is struggling”.
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She said “in a world where we witness so much cruelty and lack of humanity”, it is a good time to stop and think about the fact that 1,500 people make the choice to volunteer for others.
Avril, a volunteer for the Waterford and South East Samaritans branch, has worked with the organisation for 34 years and doesn’t think much has changed over that time.
She said that working with Samaritans for so long, the volunteering is “a part of my life” and she celebrates the “privileged position” she is in to make support calls.
Laocín, a caller who shared his story at the launch, stressed the importance of human connection in tackling loneliness and how he valued the “patience and willingness” of the volunteers.
“No matter who you are, we are human, we need other people to thrive,” he said.
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Laocín said he is doing better now thanks to the “quite extraordinary” volunteers who had been “passionate, kind and gentle”.
He said as long as Samaritans is there, he doesn’t need to “be alone with my thoughts when I can’t be alone with my thoughts”.
The most recent Central Statistics Office figures showed that 500 people died by suicide in 2022. Men aged 20-24 made up over the a third of those deaths.
Minister for Mental Health, TD Mary Butler, officially launched the report, acknowledging the role organisations like Samaritans have played in reducing suicide in Ireland by nearly a third in between 2000 and 2021.
Next week, Butler will launch a new 10-year national suicide reduction strategy.
She said the new Government approach will “strengthen services” and “improve coordinated community responses”.
Butler said the approach is shaped by nearly 1,900 public consultation submissions, many from people with lived experiences, as well as seven in-person sessions in which Samaritans volunteers were always present.
Samaritans is available to callers 365 days a year, including Christmas Day.
Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.ie.
