SPECIAL REPORT, DAY 2: ‘We need to get our city back for its citizens’

THAT children as young as six are picking up dirty needles discarded by drug users in populated areas of Cork, allied to a situation recently in the city centre where drug paraphernalia was found inside a parish church by mass-goers, provides proof — if proof were needed — that heroin is a respecter of no thing or no one. It is a dark and menacing presence in Cork that threatens our future.

I have long supported calls by eminent Cork University Hospital and Mercy University Hospital emergency consultant Chris Luke for action to be taken on a growing heroin-use problem in our city.

To my mind, very little extra has been don — there have been no innovative campaigns, high-profile multi-agency solutions — so it comes as no surprise that incidences relating to heroin use have mushroomed.