John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not suggest that one size fits all but I am concerned that more than 4,000 people are on a methadone programme for longer than ten years. When a person goes onto the programme, there needs to be personal plan for those who are suited to it to progress beyond a life on methadone. For some of those people it is a life on methadone.

I welcome the Minister of State's comments on Suboxone. Ireland, however, is a bit of an outlier in comparison with most European countries that have 20% or 30% of those on opioid substitution treatment, OST, using Suboxone. We have a very small cohort. This is not the same as in Europe. Suboxone has a lot of benefits. It is less addictive and easier to withdraw from, there is less chance of overdosing, and so on. The roll-out of Suboxone in Ireland for those who could benefit from it has been slow.

We often talk about the risks of taking somebody off methadone. There are risks also for people who remain on methadone. The drug-related death index shows there are some 700 drug-related deaths per annum, half of which are from poisonings. Approximately 20% of those who are poisoned have been in receipt of methadone. That means 1% of the population that receives methadone treatment per annum is dying. The treatment programme needs to be reviewed with personal progression plans being considered and the alternative Suboxone being made more widely available.

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