Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 3 October 2024
Committee on Drugs Use
A Health-Led Approach: Discussion (Resumed)
9:30 am
Dr. Richard Healy:
-----where they are packed to the rafters. It could potentially work in a smaller setting in places like Clare, particularly when there is no other option. They need more staff, more trained staff, less emphasis on urine and to be accessible to the local area. It may not be ideal, but it could certainly work. What I was critiquing was more the huge inner city places, but there is potential for that to work.
I can identify with the piece about not deserving housing, as can the people we work with in SURIA. People think methadone clinics are doing them a favour by giving them methadone, so if the clinical staff ask people to give a urine sample or jump through a hoop, people ask how high they want them to jump and how many urine samples they want them to give. Those people think they do not deserve anything. SURIA is made up of service users and former service users. Most of us changed our lives through that empowerment piece and being involved, being agents in our own social change, being aware of what rights and obligations we had and being aware that the way we were treated was wrong and that we deserved better. That is how we changed our lives. That empowerment piece is huge.
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