{"id":17321,"date":"2025-08-23T01:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T01:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/17321\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T01:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T01:08:08","slug":"suicide-prevention-charity-pieta-seeks-to-cut-e3-million-amid-unsustainable-financial-position-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/17321\/","title":{"rendered":"Suicide-prevention charity Pieta seeks to cut \u20ac3 million amid \u2018unsustainable\u2019 financial position \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suicide prevention charity Pieta<\/a> is to begin a restructuring programme to save \u20ac3 million after its fundraising declined by almost a quarter in recent years.<\/p>\n

The charity, which delivers therapy to people experiencing suicidal ideation and self harm, as well as to those bereaved through suicide, has said the current financial situation is \u201cunsustainable\u201d.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Manahan, chief executive of Pieta, said fundraising has been a \u201cmajor challenge\u201d since Covid-19. She attributes the drop-off to the cost-of-living crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cPieta currently has a cost base of \u20ac17 million. We get \u20ac3 million from the HSE<\/a> … We are needing to raise a significant amount of money every year that pays for the majority of our services.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said 85 per cent of Pieta\u2019s services are funded through fundraising, which \u201cmeans we are very vulnerable to peaks and troughs\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ms Manahan said there have been year-on-year decreases in funding since the pandemic, falling from \u20ac13 million to \u20ac10 million last year. Consequently the organisation has been drawing between \u20ac2.5 million and \u20ac3 million per year from their reserves.<\/p>\n

Ms Manahan said she met staff on Wednesday to inform them of the sustainability plan that will be implemented.<\/p>\n

She said it was \u201cdifficult to say\u201d how much the charity\u2019s headcount will be reduced, but the focus initially will be on non-clinical roles.<\/p>\n

There are 18 people on notice as of Friday \u201cand that of course is going to grow in the coming months\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge of taking \u20ac3 million out of an organisation like Pieta is that, inevitably, it will of course impact on the whole organisation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The priority through all of this will be remaining \u201ctrue to our purpose\u201d, she said. \u201cThe work we do is just too important. We are working with some of the highest-risk people in the country. They can\u2019t afford to wait. They need to have access to a service immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if she would be taking a pay cut to reduce costs, Ms Mannion said her salary of \u20ac120,000 is \u201cbenchmarked\u201d against others in the sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no additional allowances. Despite the fact that we\u2019ve given modest increases to all of our staff in recent years, I didn\u2019t avail of any of those increases for the past three years,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Last year, 6,865 people were helped by Pieta psychotherapists delivering 50,944 free therapy hours. More than 100,000 calls or texts were received by its helpline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suicide prevention charity Pieta is to begin a restructuring programme to save \u20ac3 million after its fundraising declined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,2450,60,19,17,15525],"class_list":{"0":"post-17321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-health-service-executive-hse","11":"tag-hse","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-pieta-house"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}