Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I ask the Minister to intervene immediately before somebody dies. That is the scale of the problem because some people who are denied access to methadone will turn back to heroin. I urged the Minister to intervene in this issue in a letter over two weeks ago, to which I received a cursory reply this morning. I again urge the Minister to intervene and begin talks with the IPU because the HSE, the Minister and the pharmacists who have taken this decision to withdraw the dispensing of methadone are culpable in this matter. They are causing chaos to people who have managed to get their lives back in order to some degree. Over 4,500 people are dependent on methadone dispensed by pharmacists, over 3,000 of whom are in this city. They are now being asked to go to different centres at different times. These people are being exposed to predatory drug dealers while queuing at the 11 centres that have been chosen by the HSE as contingency dispensing clinics. The opening hours of the clinics are not conducive to the treatment because the patients have built up a routine. That is the stability that many of these patients have built into their lives. They have children and cannot always go out in the evening to these new dispensing centres. Their personal lives are now back in chaos. Many of the drug services in this city and throughout the country have managed to help those people put some stability back in their lives yet this House and the Minister have introduced chaos to those lives.

The withdrawal of methadone services must be reversed and the Minister and the HSE must take on that role immediately, not next week or the week after. Otherwise, we will see people dying from overdoses and the like.

See this speech in context