The positions, funded through the North Inner City Drug and Alcohol Task Force, have been in place for 18 years, she said.
“The Community Participation Project was established in recognition of the importance of community engagement in addressing issues of addiction,” Muldowney said.
This is the latest step in the long erosion of a system of drug task forces that have been in place since the late 1990s to tackle the dual problems of drugs and criminality, says Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan.
Funding for the Dublin’s task forces was about 9 percent lower in 2019 than it had been in 2010 – despite an increase in HSE funding for them between 2018 and 2019, according to figures from the HSE.
Prevention is better than cure, so “you want to be funding projects that prevent addictions” and drug task forces were “holistic in their very nature”, says Doolan, who works with substance users and is on the South Inner City Drug and Alcohol Task Force.
In October 2018, all former ministers with responsibility for drugs since 1997called on the government to reaffirm its commitment to the drugs task forces saying the partnership approach was on the verge of collapse.
Last Monday night, Dublin City Council agreed a motion from Doolan calling on the government to restore funding to drugs task forces, to the level they were at in 2008, before cutbacks.
“We have fantastic drugs projects in the inner city, but nobody wants to own them, nobody wants to fund them, they all just want to compliment them,” says Doolan.
A spokesperson for the HSE said today by email that it is committed to funding the drugs task forces and is not moving away from funding prevention work.
Source: Laoise Neylon, Dublin InQuirer, 8th January 2020
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