The distressing incident happened on a Friday lunchtime last month in full view of pupils at St Audoen's National School - one of the only schools in the country located beside a needle exchange.
The woman, who was blue in the face and unresponsive, was prostrate beneath the historic city walls directly across the road from the school. The area close to the south-inner city's cathedrals is a tourist hotspot but also daily haunt of drug users and dealers.
Staff and parents rushed to the woman's aid, while others tried to shield the view from the junior infants who were filing out of school. She was revived by a drug outreach worker who administered the opiate antidote, Naloxone.
The incident is outlined in the school's new submission to An Bord Pleanala objecting to a medically supervised injecting room at the Merchants Quay drug treatment centre which backs on to the school.
It was one of three drug-related incidents outside the school on the same day and one of hundreds entered in a log kept by school principal Eilish Meagher, who says children have also been exposed to intravenous drug use, nudity, serious criminality and death.
The planning appeals board is considering whether to overturn a city council decision and approve the injecting room at the existing treatment centre and needle exchange. Although a key part of the Government's drug treatment policy, the planned Merchants Quay facility would be the first to open.
Source: Maeve Sheehan, Irish Independent, 20th October 2019
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