€3m drug rehab drive for Munster.

New detox beds and thousands of counselling hours will also be provided in response to the rise of opiate abuse in the region.

The initiative was announced by the Health Service Executive (HSE) in Cork following a meeting at City Hall between Drugs Strategy Minister John Curran, the city’s Lord Mayor Dara Murphy, and other key figures in the city’s war on drugs.

Mr Curran recently announced €1.1m in capital funding to help set up extra drug treatment clinics.

But speaking after yesterday’s meeting, Pat Healy, the recently appointed regional director of operations in the HSE South, said the HSE will boost that with an additional €2m over the next 12 months, which will result in:

* Extra methadone clinics in Cork city, Tralee, Waterford, Wexford, Carlow and Kilkenny, which will treat 165 people. Some will be open by the end of this year, the rest in early 2010.

* 10,000 additional hours of counselling hours that will help 400 addicts.

* Five dedicated detoxification beds – four for adults in Cork city and one for adolescents in Kilkenny – to facilitate access to residential rehabilitation.

* Two new link workers – one for the Cork region and one for south-eastern region – will be appointed to co-ordinate services and supports for addicts going through treatment.

Mr Healy said the new methadone clinics will eliminate waiting lists and ensure that the National Drug Strategy targets of waiting times of less than one month will be met.

"In the context of the current constraints on public resources, this initiative is a good example of how efficiencies generated through changing the way we do our business can be used to secure resources for priorities such as tackling the drug problem in the region," he said.

Dr Chris Luke, the consultant in emergency medicine at Mercy University Hospital and Cork University Hospital who has described Cork’s growing heroin problem as "an epidemic", welcomed the announcement.

"We are delighted. This is a very positive step forward. We will now have far more places to send our chronic and intractable cases," he said.

But he said he hopes additional resources can be diverted to fund drug liaison nurses in emergency departments, and to help improve the "public observatory role" of hospital emergency departments.

"We see these trends emerging first. A little extra funding would help us to systematically capture the data and analyse trends," he added.

Earlier, while addressing a Getting A Grip conference on drug and alcohol abuse in Killarney, Mr Curran warned that heroin use will rise.

He said he has asked the Methadone Implementation Committee to look at further possibilities for people on methadone to progress to a drug-free lifestyle.

Killarney Independent councillor Donal Grady also called for more protection around the Irish coast to prevent the importation of drugs.

Mr Curran said Ireland has signed up to an agreement with seven European countries to monitor the situation from Lisbon which has led to several intelligence-led seizures.

Source: Eoin English and Donal Hickey, The Irish Examiner, 12/10/2009