From nuns with needles to crash mats for clients
As he approaches his retirement, Merchants Quay boss Tony Geoghegan talks to about a tumultuous three decades
Tony Geoghegan laughs now at the story of an elderly nun and an illicit delivery of needles and syringes.
It was the tail end of 1990 and Dublin was battling with a HIV/Aids and heroin epidemic.
Just a year into his stint in the then-new Merchants Quay Project, Tony and project founder Fr Sean Cassin had
approached the former Eastern Health Board saying they wanted to set up a needle exchange, to halt the spread of HIV through dirty needles.
The health board said no and instead would send their own staff to the charity’s offices to do it.
Tony said they wanted to do it themselves. He had previously worked in a needle exchange programme in Brixton, London, when Fr Cassin approached him in 1989 and asked him to come back and join him at the MQP, which had been set up in a room at the Franciscan Friary.
“I got in [the needles] through people in Brixton and they started posting supplies and we did it ourselves.”
But when they did, they had no idea if they were legally covered. “It was very funny, looking back. We got a note that ‘there are parcels here for you’ in the sorting office in Sheriff St. We thought ‘is this legal, what will happen if we collect these?’
“We had this elderly nun who was a volunteer with us, so we put her in a taxi and sent her down to collect. It was fine, she came back with a few boxes of syringes and needles.”
Within a year, the health board had come on board.
Tony said the late ’80s were “terrible” in terms of HIV and heroin crises.
“It was concentrated in the intravenous drug use sector, over 50%,” he said. “There was no access to drug treatment and no HIV treatment.”
But the public’s fear of a spread of HIV and Aids into wider society prompted a shift in policy.
He said a group known as Aids Liaison Forum (reflecting drug users and the gay sector) formed and were represented on the State’s National Aids Strategy Committee.
It recommended an expansion in methadone (a substitute for heroin), resulting in new satellite clinics.
Tony is recollecting his early years at the now-named Merchants Quay Ireland as he prepares to step down from the helm of the drugs and homelessness charity at the end of September, shortly before he turns 66.
In a stop-start scan of the drugs and homeless area over those three decades, Tony witnessed a lot.
He recalls the mid-1990s, when Dublin and surrounding areas were hit with the second heroin epidemic, which tore through working-class communities, resulting in patrols, marches and evictions of dealers, and users.
Tony said community chants gradually shifted from ‘drugs out’ to ‘dealers out’ as communities were “conflicted” in how to respond, given that many of the users were their own children.
“I remember terrible things happening,” he said. “I remember Josie Dwyer. He came here and I knew him well.
An inoffensive guy. He was not a dealer. He was kicked to death.”
That attack, near Dolphin House flat complex, in May 1996, was carried out by individuals who had attended a community meeting.
It was followed a month later with the murder of Veronica Guerin, and a major garda response, including the setting up of the Criminal Assets Bureau. On the drug policy side, two ministerial reports, under Labour’s Pat Rabbitte, laid the foundations of a new structure.
“The Rabbitte reports recognised for the first time that drugs are concentrated in areas of disadvantage and the need to recognise that and invest resources in those communities,” Tony said.
There was a major expansion in the local provision of methadone treatment and the creation of a partnership
approach between community and voluntary groups with state agencies — manifested in local drug task forces.
But that partnership approach began to erode during the 2000s, accelerating with austerity.
“The partnership approach was very important and services grew, then the foot was taken off the pedal and, with the economic collapse, services and budgets were cut,” said Tony.
“Power retracted to the centre and decision making went from the local level to the departments. That’s when people started to lose faith.”
He said that while the overall situation has improved since the late ’80s in terms of the level of services available, he said numbers of users had massively increased and spread nationwide.
Tony said the homeless situation has worsened and that in the 1980s, they dealt mainly with elderly men and bag ladies.
“There has been a huge enmeshment between drugs and homelessness, particularly on the emergency side,” he said.
“There is, rightly, priority for families and children, but within that hierarchical system and lack of capacity is single people and single people with more complex needs are filtered down to the bottom."
“They are the people on the street, either using drugs on the street or tapping on the street.”
He said they use the Merchants Quay night cafe, where they get a mat and a warm, safe, place.
“We have 50-60 a night, that is almost four years on. In December 2014 [when it was set up] we thought it was going to be a short-term intervention.”
He said there needed to be quality emergency accommodation. He said there was a “glut at the moment” with some 7,000 homeless, housed in hotels and B&Bs and hostels.
“They are building all these hotels. I think they should take over a hotel. They did in Finland, I think. Buy one. Use it as emergency accommodation. The amount they have spent housing people in hotels in the last two years, I’m sure they could have bought one. At the same time, get public housing building in place.”
Dublin City Council spent more than €47m on hotel accommodation for homeless families in 2017.
Tony said drug users who go through residential treatment should be “guaranteed” social or public housing, and that was done in England and the US.
“That’s a huge incentive, it gives people a real start, rather than the current situation here where people that do manage to go through detox and rehab, but who haven’t already got secure accommodation, end up back in hostels.”
Tony wants a major review of the methadone programme. He said there were 10,000 people on it and estimated around half are on it over 10 years.
He questioned the care plans given to them and what efforts are made to help them get off the drug and get their lives back together, with education, skills, training, and other needs.
“From a medical view, retention and treatment is a success,” he said.
“I do recognise that, but I think this is more about economics, instead of investing in people. I would say the same about mental health.”
Tony said he had hope with the new national drugs strategy, welcoming its “health-led approach”.
“It’s a significant shift, but it still remains to be seen will it be rolled out.”
Tony isn’t sailing off into the sunset yet. He was recently appointed to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and will remain involved in a number of local drug projects, including RADE arts programme.
“I am invested in the area,” he said, “I’m not going to disappear.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
