Twelve months on from an angry Dáil confrontation over his younger brother’s heroin addiction and homelessness, Sinn Féin TD Jonathan O’ Brien tells Political Reporter Fiachra Ó Cionnaith how addicts around the country — and their families — need ongoing support to cope with their illness.
“It’s a tiny island, but it’s worlds apart. You have two brothers who grew up in a good home. One turns out, fortunately, to be an elected rep in Leinster House, a TD. The other one turns out to be a struggling heroin addict who’s homeless.
“That doesn’t make me any better than him or him worse than me. It just means our lives took different paths. It’s not like I’m the good son and he’s the bad son. We’re brothers, and that’s it.”
For over an hour, Cork North Central TD Jonathan O’ Brien has been speaking candidly about a part of life that is rarely mentioned in Dáil economic recovery speeches and even more rarely visited by the political elite.
Despite the recession being ‘officially’ over, heroin, the Sinn Féin drugs spokesman explains, is still destroying families across the country. Including, he adds, his own.
In an honest and at times emotional interview with the Irish Examiner, initially intended to be a positive story of how his brother has been helped fully out of addiction and into long-term housing, Mr O’Brien instead tells a very different story, a story that families struggling with addiction will know all too well.
Despite receiving help, housing, and support after a near two-decade heroin addiction became public knowledge during a Dáil debate a year ago, Jonathan says 37-year-old brother Martin returned to rehab over Christmas after succumbing to drugs and becoming homeless again in the previous months.
Source: Fiachra Ó Cionnaith, Irish Examiner, 11/01/16
Safer Student Nights
eBulletin
Poll
