Dr. James O'Shea:

In terms of leadership and pushing initiatives forward, we have emerging dual diagnosis services and they will develop but specifically for trauma, which is what takes up a lot my attention and thinking, we need a centralised initiative to increase and improve trauma treatment within addiction services in both the HSE and the voluntary and community sector. Addiction is very difficult to treat and outcomes, even with the best of addiction of services, are going to be poor and we are going to see relapses. Trauma is eminently treatable. We see people every day whose lives and the lives of their families are absolutely destroyed by trauma. PTSD can be treated and cured. If we focus our energy on training addiction services staff in the voluntary and public services to be able to effectively treat trauma, that will give us the best bang for our buck.