Mr. Tony Duffin:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to make a presentation to it. I am the director of the Ana Liffey Drug Project. Established in 1982, the Ana Liffey Drug Project works directly with people who use drugs, many of whom are injecting drug users. We currently have centres in Dublin, the mid-west and the midlands and we work with over 2,500 people annually. There are at least 3,000 injecting drug users in Dublin with approximately 400 openly injecting in the city each month. We believe this number could be far higher, but due to the furtive nature of public injecting it is difficult to give a more precise figure. People who inject drugs in the public domain do not want to do it; they find the act degrading and shameful. However, there is currently nowhere for them to go to inject where they can be safe or supported to make healthier choices.

Since January 2012, one of the strategic objectives of the Ana Liffey Drug Project has been to secure stakeholder support for the provision of supervised injecting facilities. Many organisations have stated their support for same, including the Better City For All group, the CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign, the National Family Support Network, Safetynet Ireland, the Dublin Region Homeless Executive and many more organisations and institutions.

We understand that concerns exist about an intervention that seems counter-intuitive to some people. To those of us working to help our most vulnerable people with complex and multiple needs who inject drugs in the public domain, however, the provision of supervised injecting facilities is an important step in the right direction. For our part, the argument for supervised injecting facilities is not in question – they are an empathetic and effective response to the issue of public injecting. It is obvious to us that, as with our current services, supervised injecting facilities must work within the existing health system by offering referral pathways and working in partnership with An Garda Síochána. This view is reflected in international research on the delivery of supervised injecting facilities. With this understanding, and based on the latest available evidence, we expect that supervised injecting facilities will achieve the following outcomes: they will attract the target group; they will reduce health risks; they will address public order and safety concerns; and they will not increase drug-related crime or local drug use. More importantly, they will save lives. No one has ever died from an overdose in any of the 90-plus drug consumption rooms throughout the world.

I wish to express some words of thanks on the record. Ana Liffey Drug Project has worked closely with the voluntary assistance scheme of the Bar Council of Ireland to produce an initial draft of the legislation that the committee is considering. I wish to note our thanks to the Bar Council for its support in this regard. I also wish to express thanks to the previous Government. In particular, I thank the former Minister of State, Senator Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, for championing this important issue, and the former Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, for bringing the issue to Cabinet in December 2015. I thank the current Government and, in particular, the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, for continuing to prioritise supervised injecting and ensuring that funds have been allocated for this purpose for 2017. I wish to thank the other senior politicians with whom I have spoken on this matter. All have been open, engaged and alive to the fact that supervised injecting facilities are important evidence-based health interventions that will make a real difference to the health of drug users and to the amenity of the areas in which they are situated.

Moreover, I wish to thank the statutory agencies with which we work closely. These include the HSE, Dublin City Council and An Garda Síochána. An extraordinary amount of genuine inter-agency work takes place in Dublin city centre and this should be recognised. The introduction of a safer injecting facility is not without its challenges, especially from a policing perspective, but all the challenges have been met elsewhere. In Ireland, we are fortunate to have some of the most skilled, pragmatic and empathetic officers anywhere and I believe they will meet these challenges admirably.

It is a pleasure to be before the committee today. The Ana Liffey Drug Project has worked hard on this issue. It is fantastic that we no longer talk about whether an injecting facility is needed in Dublin. The conversation has moved to how it should be done. Essentially, it is a question of the issues these Houses need to consider in dealing with this legislation.

I will outline our advice to the Houses. The Houses should learn generally from the legislative experience of other jurisdictions and avoid pitfalls. The Houses should keep the legislation focused on the primary task of creating a legal framework within which injecting facilities can operate successfully. I appeal to the Houses not to make the mistake of legislating on operational matters. Adequate controls on the conditions that need to be met to operate a supervised injecting facility can be dealt with through a licensing process. This framework has the advantage that the conditions of a licence can be varied to respond to local or emerging needs.

In summary, there is considerable support for supervised injecting facilities. There has been and continues to be brave leadership across the political spectrum. Our hope is that this legislation will be sufficiently flexible to do what it is intended to do, that is to say, to create a framework under which supervised injecting facilities can be established. We urge all present to resist making it more complex than it needs to be. Experience elsewhere tells us that such an approach creates unnecessary barriers to accessing support and further isolates the people we are trying to help.