Sligo business owner Aolish Gormley struggled with her mental health after having her second baby.

Despite many strides in maternal care in Ireland in the past decade, suicide remains the leading cause of death for new mothers, having increased in recent years, according to recent figures from Mental Health Reform.

The amount of support available for struggling mothers varies hugely according to contacts Aolish has received through the campaign’s social media channels.

“In a lot of cases, women will be referred to the perinatal mental health team by their GP... There's varying reports on that in terms of waiting lists and how long it takes to be seen, depending on the area that you're in, or to be referred to private counselling... depending on the pressure on the system,” she says.

“So if there's a lot of women looking for it or if there's a lot of pressure, then you could be looking at some women who say they have waited six months for appointments with counselors... when you’re talking about that data with suicide rates, six months for anybody that's struggling with their mental health is too long.

“A day is too long for some people really struggling with their mental health.”

One major issue for the campaign is the lack of mother and baby psychiatric units.

“We should have three. We don't have any. And that means that if a mother does have to be admitted to a psychiatric unit, she has to be admitted without her baby. And I have spoken to mothers who have said firstly that that sent them even into a worse downward spiral, because they had to leave their babies, and I've spoken to other mothers who refused that care and refused to get the help that they really, really needed and knew that they needed because they could not bear leaving their babies. And that's the situation that some mothers are being faced with, and in 2026 that really is not good enough.”

Aolish has established the Year of Care campaign to lobby for a full year of postnatal mental health care for new mothers including GP follow ups and establishment of a perinatal mother-and-baby unit.

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22 year old Evan Fitzgerald, identified later as a ‘vulnerable young man’, died at his own hand outside a Carlow shopping centre last June. He was on bail at the time for firearms offences.

He and two friends had been arrested in March 2024 in a Garda sting after they had attempted to purchase weapons on the dark web – it turned out the ‘sellers’ were Gardai, and the guns were disabled.

They were released on bail after a court appearance in which Gardai never revealed the sting operation that had led to their arrest. In an unprecedented move, Judge Desmond Zaidan later spoke out to correct the record on what transpired in that court appearance.

In the aftermath of Mr Fitzgerald’s death, a number of politicians have called for an inquiry into how the sting operation was conducted, Garda statements in court, and leaks suggesting he had a ‘manifesto’ at the time of his death, which turned out to be untrue.

Irish Examiner special correspondent Mick Clifford has been covering this case, and he’s the guest on today’s episode.

Mick Clifford: Fatal aftermath of Garda sting raises grave questions about policing failure

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In April, a Cork-based Ukrainian influencer called Rendy Vlad with over a million followers hit the headlines after a video he took of a young woman’s medical emergency in Cork was removed by TikTok. The video was filmed using Meta’s smart glasses, technology which has been sparking privacy concerns for quite some time.

Since then the Irish Examiner’s Emer Walsh has been following the activities of the MTU student closely – and people filmed by him in their workplaces have begun to speak out about their experiences. Emer is the guest on today’s podcast.

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Woman filmed at Cork workplace by influencer using smart glasses calls for tougher privacy laws

Cork influencer's Meta glasses video of young woman's medical emergency removed by TikTok

Harassment by online influencers requires legal change

The Deirdre O’Shaughnessy Podcast: Concerns grow around surveillance and technology’s impact on women

Margaret E Ward: Tech-enabled stalking and AI abuse are fuelling violence against women

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