Why I support injecting centres

AS IRELAND commemorated the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, the bodies of two men were found a few dozen metres away from each other in Dublin’s city centre.

The body of a 42-year-old man was found in an apartment complex on Foley Street – he had lain undiscovered for several days before the alarm was raised. 

A man, aged 33, was found dead in the toilets of Connolly Station, with a syringe found nearby. Both fatalities were the result of overdoses. 

If you hadn’t heard about these cases it is because they didn’t result in any public outcry. There were no protests, no petitions, no media documentaries. For many in Irish society, these lives don’t seem to matter. 

But they do matter. Ireland has the third highest overdose rate in Europe and some of our most vulnerable citizens are literally dying on our streets. 

Society blames the addict for their addiction, but there is no other area of medicine where someone at risk of death is treated with such a judgmental attitude. 

If we are honest, most of us have heard those sucked into addiction referred to as ‘junkies’ more than once. In fact, we hear it all the time. And for me, it is time for us to reclaim the humanity of this issue and to consign that dehumanising and degrading term to the dustbin of history. 

The issue of street injecting is not unique to Dublin but other countries have taken a much more progressive approach and they are saving lives. Over 90 Medically Supervised Injecting Centres have been opened across Europe and Australia to combat the issue of street injecting and have proven to be incredibly successful. 

No one has ever died in any injecting centre; the issue of drug litter such as syringes on the streets has greatly reduced; and users are much less likely to contract HIV or Hepatitis C from risky and unsafe injecting.

In short, the centres save lives. 

In December 2015, as Minister for the National Drugs Strategy, I succeeded in getting cabinet approval for the introduction of Medically Supervised Injecting Centres to Ireland. The Programme for Government of the current administration commits to continuing with that policy and the Health Committee held its first meetings about the legislation last month. 

It is envisaged that the legislation will be in place in the spring of this year which will enable the minister to seek applications to open and run Ireland’s first Medically Supervised Injecting Centre this year.

For every change in public policy there will of course be questions and concerns. But what I have been struck by since I first raised this proposal in 2015 is the number of people who approach me quietly and tell me how they lost a loved one to a drug overdose. 

However, the stigma of addiction affects them and their family. They feel judged and feel shame. It is as if they feel they failed. They haven’t failed – we have. And we will continue to fail unless we embrace new thinking in the drugs debate. 

I would ask anyone who might have misgivings about the opening of such a facility: if your child was to fall into addiction, would you rather they injected in a dedicated centre surrounded by medical professionals, or in a lonely laneway behind a skip or in a public toilet? Because it is in places like that where most of the bodies are found. 

The introduction of Medically Supervised Injecting Centres won’t solve Ireland’s drug problem but they are certainly a step in the right direction. They will save the most vulnerable of lives, and help addicts to take the first steps in the road to meaningful recovery. 

Senator Aodhán Ó Ríordáin is a member of the Labour Party in Dublin Bay North.