One of the country’s longest-running specialist drug centres witnessed a 31% jump in demand for services last year.

A heroin addict who threw a bag of stolen goods into his neighbour’s garden during a Garda raid was today given a three-year suspended sentence for burglary.

A brother of Brian Meehan, the man serving life imprisonment for the murder of Veronica Guerin, has been jailed for six years for committing a series of robberies armed with knives after relapsing into heroin addiction.