July 28th 2003
Press Release
Shooting
Galleries
While one Government Minister is closing hospital beds and banning smoking another Minister (who happens to be the Taoiseach' s brother) is happily announcing the possibility of providing places for our homeless drug addicts to inject themselves with heroin.
Mr Noel Ahern is sadly misguided in his attempt to take the focus off our appalling statistics on homelessness and drug addiction for which this government is responsible. The public who had been duped into believing that Methadone Clinics were not in fact state sponsored addiction centres have now come to appreciate that these centres have failed miserably. Ireland now has the 5th highest rate of heroin use in Europe. There is only one residential treatment for teenage drug/alcohol abusers. (An excellent 12-bed facility in Kilkenny.) But treatment costs money.
Shooting galleries as these places are called are of course a lot cheaper in the short term than providing housing and drug free treatment for drug addicted people and the short term is how the present government is thinking with elections looming said Grainne Kenny President of EURAD to-day.
To condemn homeless drug addicts to shooting galleries in place of care is immoral and our Government does not have that right.
I have visited these places in Switzerland, The Netherlands and Germany and would strongly advise Mr Ahern not to waste the taxpayer's money on this trip. They contravene the UN Conventions on Narcotics to which this country is a signatory.
