Community cocaine projects funded by €530k

MORE than €530,000 is being spent this year on specific community cocaine projects, it emerged yesterday.

There are seven community cocaine initiatives in Dublin and Cork, which are aimed at reaching out to cocaine users who are not attending existing treatment services, which are heavily geared towards treating heroin addicts.

These community projects are in addition to a cocaine drop-in centre in Galway city, which is run by the Health Service Executive. The HSE also has advanced plans to set up three “discreet” cocaine clinics in north Dublin.

Chairwoman of the National Drug Strategy Team, Patricia O’Connor, said that the team was funding seven community projects which were providing services to cocaine users in their area, with a total cost of €533,000.

This includes community projects in Ballyfermot, in west Dublin €78,236), Finglas and Cabra, in north Dublin (€82,000), Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, in south Dublin (€75,000), Cork (€110,000), Tallaght (€77,000) and north-east Dublin (€11,000).

Ms O’Connor said that the Dún Laoghaire project was the most recent initiative, which was providing a drop-in centre one day a week. She said the local drugs taskforce had distributed 12,000 cards publicising the drop-in centre in the area.

Ms O’Connor said there wasn’t a specific cocaine project in Cork, but that two counsellors had been assigned to work with projects in the city and county that were seeing cocaine users.

Similarly, there were no specific projects in north-east Dublin. However, Ms O’Connor said that funding had been made available for groups dealing with cocaine users.

“Things are being done and many of these projects operate more like a drop-in centre,” said Ms O’Connor.

“We’re spending about half a million euro, but it’s more about people working together to get the message out and getting information across.”