Injecting unit a response to Ireland's high overdose rate

The planned supervised injecting centre is a “specific” public health measure being taken to tackle Ireland’s very high drug mortality rate, the Government says.

Minister of State for Health Promotion and the National Drugs Strategy, Catherine Byrne, was responding to the annual report of the EU drugs agency which found, not for the first time, that Ireland has one of the highest rates of drug-induced deaths in the union.

The European Drug Report 2018 reported that Ireland had the joint fourth highest rate of such deaths, at 70 per million people.