Study due within the next month on a Cork drug-injection centre for addicts

University College Cork is to deliver an interim feasibility study in the next month to identify if there is a need for a supervised drug-injection centre for addicts in Cork.

A similar facility, the first of its kind in the country, is to open in Dublin later this year. It will be operated by Merchants Quay.

Colm Kelleher, a Cork City South-West councillor, said: “I’m looking forward to the forthcoming report, carried out in relation to the need for a safe, supervised injection facility in Cork.”

Mr Kelleher told The Echo: “The HSE have issued red warnings, and people have lost their lives due to synthetic opioid overdoses — I know of two in Ballincollig, people that have lost their lives — they’re sons, daughters, they’re our citizens, and they’re sick and need our help.”

He and four other city council delegates travelled to Lisbon with Professor Eamon Keenan, national clinical lead on addiction services; Joe Kirby, social inclusion manager with the HSE; and delegates from An Garda Síochána, last year, for a learning site visit. The Fianna Fáil councillor said: “We visited mobile injection facilities and fixed ones, and it was very insightful. We went over to see what we could take from the visit to formalise a bespoke strategy for facilities here.

“I, for one, believe they are needed, and I would be very keen to visit the facility in Merchant’s Quay, when it is operational.

“One thing they faced a lot of resistance to in Dublin was the location, and rightly so: The average citizen is concerned, wondering: ‘Are we going to have this on our own doorstep?’

“Something I didn’t like in Lisbon was that there was a fixed unit in a residential area. I believe that can have somewhat of a negative effect on a community, so it wasn’t all perfect in Portugal, but we aim to take the good things and apply them here.”

Mr Kelleher said that a facility in Cork should be on a medical campus, a mobile unit, which would be cost-effective, and “in the event of an overdose, someone would be right next to a hospital”.

“There would be clinicians and medical experts working there, but it wouldn’t be fixed to any one medical facility, it could go to a different hospital every day.”