Proper patient assessments would have made staff in one region of the country more aware of their suicide risk, according to the findings of a report carried out by the Inspector of the Mental Health Services in the Carlow/Kilkenny and South Tipperary area.

13 people under the care of mental health services in the region died by apparent suicide between January 2012 and March 2014.

The report was requested by the Mental Health Commission.

It found that staff training for risk assessment was either 'insufficient, or else it wasn't being carried out at all'.

It has raised serious questions about the quality of assessment and care in the services during that time.

John Saunders is chairman of the Mental Health Commission.

"People were suggesting that there was an unusually high number of suicides in the region for that period of time", he told Newstalk Breakfast.

"Subsequently in our investigation, we found out in fact that that wasn't the case, that it was quite comparable - not to say acceptable - but certainly comparable to, for example, UK figures".

"But that was one of the issues which alerted people to the fact that there was an issue to be examined".

He told Breakfast there was not a consistent assessment of patients.