Dr. Adrienne Foran:

The problem with cocaine is its very short-acting half-life. If we get a urine sample from a mother who delivers today or from a baby who is born today in the Rotunda who we think is withdrawing, we pick up methadone and heroin from a few days or a week earlier. The cocaine will be long gone even if she has taken it that morning so the only way we can actually accurately detect cocaine is, again, in a stool sample or hair follicle, which will have a three-month lifespan. This is technically easy to do but, again, needs funding. I would have said when I came back in 2007 when everything was still up and running with the Celtic tiger that we would have seen a lot more and it was definitely linked with certain anomalies such as gastroschisis, which is a bowel problem that a baby can be born with. We feel, as does Justin, who is the liaison midwife, that it has probably reduced. It may be resurfacing but in the more middle-class to wealthy areas where it is a more expensive recreational drug. It is difficult to detect it in the baby in the same way we detect other things but it can be done. It just needs resourcing. A baby will not withdraw from it in the same manner as a baby withdrawing from an opiate so it is more difficult to identify in the baby.