Professor Aiden McCormick:

We have four pilot programmes in the opiate substitution therapy clinics, with one in Dún Laoghaire, one in Castle Street, one in the drug treatment centre and another one that has just started in north Dublin. The therapies are being prescribed and dispensed in the drug treatment centres. They are our community projects. There is also a project in the Mater Hospital where they link with Safetynet. A patient comes to the hospital once and it is then dispensed in the community. There are five community-based projects and one in the Prison Service - in Mountjoy, Wheatfield and another prison. We are trying to ramp up all of these and we are also trying to establish a service in Limerick. We have difficulties in engaging with University Hospital Limerick because it has many challenges, but we are trying to establish a treatment programme in the drug treatment service directly in Limerick and, if necessary, to send a hepatologist down once weekly to see these patients. We are getting mobile fibre scans which will allow us to go out in the community.