Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge that the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, contacted me yesterday to say she would not be available today for which I thank her and she has agreed to engage further on the matter. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, for being here today to take this Commencement matter. Over the past few months, we have seen a very high rate of overdose due to heroin containing synthetic opioids. We often do not think of how the globe is so connected in this sense. When we look at the Taliban reducing poppy cultivation by 95%, most people will see that as a great thing because it is reducing the amount of opioids coming out of a country and going around the world. However, it then leaves a hole because people will create synthetic drugs to which we are probably not ready to respond or catch up with so everything has a consequence.

Unfortunately, in the past few months, we have seen what this consequence is. The fact that there have been over 40 deaths does not mean that there are not more deaths that have not been captured adequately. This is on top of the fact that already, one person per day dies from an overdose. They are not all opioid overdoses but the ones that are opioid overdoses are preventable with naloxone.

Naloxone is available on prescription in Ireland. There is no need for it to be on prescription. It is not a drug that can be abused.The only risk with having complete access to naloxone is if somebody thinks that someone is in an overdose and brings them around and that person goes into withdrawal. When you measure the small risk of being overly cautious with the use of naloxone, given that the alternative is death, we should have free access to naloxone in chemists. Currently, pharmacists do not seem to understand how it is prescribed. There is now a box tick for doctors who can prescribe naloxone but lots of doctors who prescribe it are getting calls from pharmacies about this new aspect of the prescription so maybe there needs to be a campaign to help pharmacies understand this new box on the prescription in regard to naloxone.

My fear is that if we do not make naloxone accessible we will just continue to watch people die unnecessarily. We should be able to have naloxone in our homes. The HSE did a very good job of getting the message out in recent months. I protect people that I love very much and ask them not to buy heroin because there is a bad batch. When somebody is in that situation they will often still take the risk because they are experiencing such bad withdrawal, they have no other options, or they have no way of knowing. So many families do not know, first of all, that there is access to naloxone. The individual who is using heroin is the one who gets prescribed naloxone but that does not seem to make sense when they are not going to be the ones who respond to their own overdose. We should be able to go into a chemist, get naloxone and have it in our homes and community organisations. Outside of Dublin we not only have barriers to naloxone but we also have waiting lists for opioid substitute replacement of up to 12 months in some counties, which will also bring down overdoses over time if people are moving from heroin to a more managed maintenance programme.

One more point I wish to raise relates to the prison system. Reports are coming to me from the prison system is that some of the lads are trained in overdose prevention but they do not have access to naloxone. Even in the likes of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston there is a little glass box, like in a fire alarm system, that can be shattered with a hammer to get naloxone out. Some of the men in the prison system are sometimes afraid to alert the prison authorities that there is a potential overdose because they feel it could result in punishment or raids on cells, so they may wait too long before they alert someone. We have the Red Cross in there training people as listeners and on overdose prevention and they could also be tasked to have peer-to-peer access to naloxone if something does happen on a landing, which could be in a glass box like in the JFK museum and other places in America.