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THE HSE HAS put the call out for an operator of a supervised injecting facility in Dublin City Centre.
The tender, which is on etenders.gov.ie, says the HSE is looking “for suitably qualified and experienced service providers to submit tenders to provide a medically supervised injecting centre in Dublin City Centre area on a pilot basis”.
The pilot phase is expected to last for an 18 month period with an evaluation at six months and again at 18 months.
Tenders must be submitted by 25 September 2017. According to the HSE, a supervised injecting facility “is a clean, safe, healthcare environment where people can inject drugs, obtained elsewhere, under the supervision of trained health professionals”.
It says that the centres “offer a compassionate, person-centred service which reduces the harms associated with injecting drug use and can help people access appropriate services”.
A SIF can help health service staff to reach and support vulnerable and marginalised people who often do not, cannot or no longer engage with existing health services.
Supervised injecting facilities typically provide people who use drugs with sterile injecting equipment, as well as counselling services before and after drug consumption. They also provide an emergency response in the event of overdose, and primary medical care.
Senators approved the legislation to set up supervised injection centres in May of this year.
Senator Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, the former drugs minister, welcomed the news, saying he was “so proud” of everyone who helped make it possible.
At the time, Tony Duffin, CEO of the Ana Liffey Drug Project, said that it was a “great day for drug policy in Ireland” and that the facilities will “save both lives and money”.
Reduction of public health risks
The supervised injecting facility aims to:
Dr Eamon Keenan, HSE national addiction lead, said that the facilities typically consist of a reception area, a drug consumption area and a recovery area.
“The exterior of a SIF looks like any other health or social care premises,” he said, adding that there are over 90 of these types of facilities across the world in Europe, Canada and Australia.
“From research that has been carried out in these countries there is clear evidence of the benefits that such services can provide both for people who use drugs and the wider society,” he said. “The research also indicates that these types of facilities do not encourage drug use, delay treatment entry or aggravate problems associated with local drug markets.”
The facility will operate by means of a licence to be granted under the Misuse of Drugs (Supervised Injecting Facilities) Act 2017.
“The service will provide for adult drug users who are on the premises of the supervised injecting facility with the permission of the licence holder, for the purposes of consuming drugs by injection only,” said the HSE.
A key part of the tender process is the establishment of a community liaison post to work with the community in the selected location.
The provider and the proposed location will be known once the evaluation of the submissions is completed by end of October 2017.
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Ah it’s great isn’t it. People who are seriously I’ll through no fault of there when are having to wait years to see a specialist. But a person who decides to inject illegal drugs in there bodies will be given a place to carry about there illegal activities. what a country we live in.
@Roy Dowling: Hmm. Spelling and grammar help carry your point. Are you high?
@Roy Dowling:
Yeah -totally agree with you
@Roy Dowling:
Crazy really. A man almost died on the street recently because of HSE protocol yet here we are enabling junkies to live a lifestyle of death.
Injection Centres do not reduce crime, they just facilitate junkies to process the proceeds of crime. They still have to procure the money to pay for the drug through criminal activity. If the argument is that these centres save lives then the real winners will be the criminal organizations supplying heroin as now they will have a longer living clientele.
@Emmet Dillane:
The objective of the centre is not to reduce crime. That’s one for the government, Gardai and judiciary. Let’s see what the outcome is in a couple of years.
@Roy Dowling: Totally agree with you, and don’t mind these grammar and spelling experts, it’s sad for them
@John Tierney: A lot of people hard hard abused sad lifestyles but went on to be productive members of society. Ok
@John Tierney: bolloxology
@John Tierney: p! Ss off will you. Town is like the living dead as it. I’d ship them off and let them detox or disintegrate.
@Sean
Tell us more about your idea! This could be the answer everyone is looking for to our countries drug problem.
Where would you ship addicts to?
Another country is it? Deport all drug addicts. How many times would they have to take drugs before you ship them, would you drug test everyone in the country or just ship off people caught with drugs? What about alcoholic homeless people… what should we do with them?
If they’re going to supervise the injecting they might as well supply the stuff they’re injecting as well. The way they’re planning this they’ll just be subsidising the Kinehan/Hutch gangs by providing a free service to their customers
@Quiet Goer: quite correct. If they also supplied they would remove some of the massive demand and some of the income the gangs earn.
It represents billions that gets sucked out of the irish economy and drives crime.
@Quiet Goer: Yeah and why are pilots getting involved to add to the expense? Is this to help the addicts get high?
Here are some facts:
1) Most people who take drugs will never become addicts
2) Alcohol is by far the most socially destructive drug
3) Nicotine (in the form of smoking) is by far the most lethal drug
4) International experience suggests that supervised injecting centres reduce harm all around. Given that addicts *will* get drugs, clearing the streets of illicit debris is a major plus
5) Before about 1920, in most of the world, there were no restrictions in selling illegal drugs. As prohibition has increased, the problem has increased.
6) Most addicts are highly traumatised people… for whatever reason. Care and aid demonstrably help far more than punitive measures.
@George Salter:
Finally a comment with some rationale behind it..,.
@Kevin: I specialise in *actual* information. I’m hoping for the “most hated poster” award…
@George Salter: no substitute for getting dry – everything else neoliberalism bull crap
@George Salter: People who decide to do drugs at the expense of their friends and family, not to mention the social burden on Society (not including the visual/ phsycolgical impact of a junkie out of their brains harassing people on the streets) don’t deserve money that could be better spent in our health services, on genuinely ill/injured patients through no fault of their own, or is this just a case of out of sight out of mind?
@Stephen Fitzgerald: I don’t really know where to go with this. I’m going to suggest that you are badly misinformed. If this is true, then: Most drug users do not become addicts. .. Most addicts are not bad people, but seriously sick. ..Being sick isnt/shouldn’t be a crime. ..Helping addicts has a greater return than criminalising addiction.
@George Salter: having had first hand experience of all of the above, your comments and mine, where should the money come from. Surely not at the expense of people who need genuine help, funding has to come from somewhere and you can’t help people that won’t help themselves, money better spent elsewhere. May seem harsh but we have very limited resources that are better deployed elsewhere!
@Stephen Fitzgerald: I have first hand experience too. We should agree to differ.
@George Salter: George you don’t see any centres for smokers or alcoholics like the stop shop for health there advertising assistance for
@George Salter: spend the money on the rehab center’s which have huge waiting lists…
Get them well makes more sense, injection centers are an expensive sticking plaster..
@George Salter: if a junkie is going to jack up skag into his cock in the middle of O’Connell street in broad daylight, I can’t see him giving a crap that there’s an injection centre a mile away
@George Salter: here’s a fact, injection centres are not for drug users they are for heroin addicts.
All heroin addicts are addicted to heroin
Why are they looking to outsource… Just an excuse to avoid responsibility in the event it goes wrong. We will have a duplication of service and HSE management and supervisory staff doing jack squat. Ding what they do best I guess…
@Darren Hehir: or looling for someone who specialises in the centres? Plus may even be cheaper to run.
Typical ireland with the softly softly approach to the poor drug addicts. Give them a place to inject their illegally obtained drugs but the government don’t help the decent law abiding citizen or those genuinely sick needing hospital treatment. Fed up with this country – the less you do the more thanks you get. Pay taxes, don’t cause any trouble of any sort and you get feck all help. They’ll bail out banks, criminals and the lowest form of society while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet while living decently.
@shaz: And when someone tries to do something for a minority of unwell people, you criticise it? What do you want instead?
@shaz
So you’d prefer to have them die on the streets?
@john doe: do you really want ananswer?…..
Yes.
@shaz:
If you are well, have a job, pay tax and are getting on ok then you need minimal support from the state. If you are a drug addict (predominately due to shitty early life circumstances, poor education, dysfunctional family etc) then you need help to kick it. The state can assist to a degree. Your tax and mine pays for this. Relapse rates are high and addict behaviour can be ugly, pathetic, selfish and unedifying but success is also possible. I suppose it reduces down what type of society you want to live in.
Disgraceful. Setting up a government-sanctioned drug den sends all the wrong signals and totally undermines the rule of law.
@Emma Murphy: Yea coz the laws are working well the way they are at the moment
@Emma Murphy:
Hang ‘em high Emma…?
@Emma Murphy: But, in the end, it’s society that condones or condemns these. We already condone on-street dealing and using, so where is the problem in trying to minimise harm? Please try and think, before regurgitating a half- baked opinion.
What next? supervised drinking centres for alcoholics.
@Dj: They are called pubs, and are controlled by the vintners, (who include many politicians), so are above reproach
@Dj: they are called pubs, there’s a gazillion of them.
@George Salter: The government needs the tax. Besides, people do drink with food and manage not to go berserk. Is it not a bit Puritan to be against all legal relaxants? Drunks are boring, sure, but I don’t think that anyone who can take it or leave it is in the same boat as unfortunate addicts who steal or go on the streets just to stay high.
@Fiona Fitzgerald: drunks, as you call them, have done and continue to do more damage in this country than drug addicts.
@Fiona Fitzgerald: I dont disagree with anything you say. My point is, the state/government/society is happy to licence and regulate a drug that has a known history of unpleasant side-effects, including the things you mention. Again, most drug users will *never* trouble the state/people. Most drinkers won’t either. Is there a difference?
@George Salter: And where do they get the money for the drugs but by robbing the law abiding people of the State.
Better late than never I suppose.
@Ciaràn: Better never.
@Cindy Crawford:
Maybe we should just shoot them all.
Ask Rentokil to set it up.
My God ….is this really why i pay my taxes ….this is all down to a failed labour politician who then got a cushy senators job.
@”": Yes a bloody pompous one too who won’t have to deal with this in his area
Out for tender, we don’t do houses, we don’t do schools, rubbish , water. What exactly do we do?
@Dáithí Ó Raghallaigh: Yeah lets not ask those who’ve expertise in this area for a quote. We can have a crack and see what happens. Be grand.
@Dáithí Ó Raghallaigh: Look after criminals in any way we can and now drug addicts
Should we really be injecting our pilots?
@Spiderman: More importantly Spiderman, will the scheme take off, will they have to check in, will there be a bag check, what about those with red eye, will they be issued with a sick bag, where will it all land.
@Honeybee: What’s red eye?
The junkies of Dublin don’t need a safe place to inject the people of Dublin need a safe place from drug addicts. It gets worse every year you can’t walk through the city center without seeing one. The government won’t help them because they’re hoping they’ll just drop dead. Even with the mobile clinic people will still be shooting up all over the place. I wonder if we could get a fact check on the percentage of people who actually successfully complete a detox program and how many relapse.
“You cant walk through the city without seeing one” god that must be awful for you, seeing at least one drug addict a day!!
Do you be very scared?
You would think they would have somewhere out of the way for them and their dirty needles so they dont be sacreing you… some sort of centre…
HSE run…….disaster in the making so!!
Well since the 1980′s the war on drugs has cost hundreds of billions of currency from all over the globe, we cant keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results.
Dublin has a chronic drug problem and the streets are full of junkies.
Drug addiction is an illness and needs intervetion, just as alcohol does.
Prevention and cure are more likely to happen this way.
And if you cant have empathy gor the junkies, think about their families and theor children who suffer as a result.
This is good for Society.
Perhaps we need a few consultants as well.
The privatisation of our State services continues. Government can’t/won’t help these people under current backward drugs legislation so dump the issue elsewhere while conveniently passing the buck. Another example being the introduction of Seetec/Turas Nua to conscript the unemployed to chase invisible jobs. This while making substantial commissions from the public purse.
The junkies of Dublin don’t need a safe place to inject the people of Dublin need a safe place from drug addicts. It gets worse every year you can’t walk through the city center without seeing one. The government won’t help them because they’re hoping they’ll just drop dead. Even with the mobile clinic people will still be shooting up all over the place. I wonder if we could get a fact check on the percentage of people who actually successfully complete a detox program and how many relapse.
Another quango like Tusla. Cost a lot and unable to make decisions.
Spend the money on rehab center’s, and help them get off the stuff….
Serious lack of rehab center’s in Ireland think they should tackle that first…
Would make more sense ..
The OCI should be well able to do this.
We have pubs for alcoholics, online gambling for gamblers why not injection centres for drug addicts ?
@Richy: last time I checked pubs and online gambling were not paid for by taxpayers money
Badly mc Donagh on the reception desk with a headset and mic , twirling on an office chair :)
Luggs Brannigan will be rolling over in the grave
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