Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy and welcome the opportunity to inform the House on the current position relating to naloxone. A strategic priority in the national drugs strategy is to develop integrated care pathways and harm reduction responses for high-risk drug users, including people who are homeless, offenders, stimulant users, and injecting drug-users, in order to achieve better health outcomes and to reduce drug-induced deaths. The Health Research Board recently reported that 354 drug-induced deaths were recorded in 2021, which was 85 fewer deaths than in 2020 and represented a reduction of 19%. The reason the figures relate to 2021 is that inquests, etc., lead to a two-year delay in getting the figures. Opioids were responsible for seven in ten of these deaths in 2021 and continue to play a major role in drug poisoning deaths. I believe that these tragic deaths could have been prevented.

Reducing the risk of drug overdose requires robust public health responses, such as safer injecting facilities, more treatment services, greater access to naloxone, and better awareness about the risks and consequences of drug use. Getting more people with problematic drug use into treatment is a key step in reducing the risk of drug overdose. We are hoping to have a supervised injecting facility opened by mid-December in Merchants Quay Ireland in Dublin. The Department of Health is providing over €160 million per annum on measures to treat problematic drug use. A major component of this funding is to enhance access to and delivery of drug services in the community, through HSE addiction services, drug and alcohol task forces and community-based service providers. As a result of this additional investment, the number of cases entering drug treatment has greatly increased in recent years. In 2023, there were 13,104 cases in treatment, a 50% increase from 2017.

Naloxone is a prescription-only medication that is used as an antidote to temporarily reverse the effects of opioid drugs like heroin, morphine, methadone and synthetic opioids if someone overdoses. The Department of Health works closely with the HSE National Naloxone Oversight Quality Assurance Group to increase awareness and accessibility of naloxone. It is important that naloxone is accessible to support workers, peers and family members. I acknowledge the group’s work and assure it of my continued support. The introduction of the Medicinal Products (Prescription and Control of Supply) (Amendment) (No. 3) Regulation, SI 238 of 2023, in May 2023 allowed the HSE to approve courses for persons who may supply and administer naloxone in an emergency. In 2023, over 2,000 people participated in overdose awareness and naloxone administration training. Over 6,500 units of naloxone were supplied by the HSE to services in 2023 and already over 4,000 units had been supplied by the end of July this year. Pharmacists who have undertaken appropriate training can already administer naloxone for opioid overdoses. The HSE and the pharmacy regulator have recently taken steps to make the training more accessible for pharmacists. I am committed to expanding the naloxone programme to further mitigate the risk of drug overdose deaths linked with opioid use.

I will conclude by making a point about the figures the Deputy is referring to at European level. The figures we should very much be comparing with are in Scotland because it has the same system for accumulating and gathering the information. In Germany, for example, not all of the information is gathered and there is a view that only about one third of the cases are actually reported.

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