Families in terror need 'safe place' to go, says bishop
The Geiran report — commissioned in the wake of the murder and dismemberment of 17-year-old Keane Mulready Woods, above — recommended a review of the FASN's funding. File picture
An “awful lot” of families dealing with addiction will be left stranded if a long-running family support group is forced to close its doors because of a lack of funding, a leading cleric has said.
The Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh, Michael Router, said the Family Addiction Support Network (FASN) — which operates five groups across the North East — provided a “safe place” for these families to go to.
He said there was “an absolute urgency” to secure extra monies for the network, which used up all of its small €7,500 yearly budget from the HSE in June.
He said addiction in families, often accompanied by intimidation over drug debts, is a “very silent sort of suffering” as people were very frightened and afraid to seek help.
The bishop, who is a patron of FASN, said that the Department of Health had allotted €70,000 for each of the four regions in Budget 2021, announced last October, but that none of this money has yet reached the agencies on the ground.
As previously reported in the , the FASN is also awaiting the results of a review of its HSE funding — as recommended in the Geiran report, set up on the back of the murder and dismemberment of 17-year-old Keane Mulready Woods in the town in January 2020.
Bishop Router said he wrote to the drugs strategy minister, Frank Feighan, last week to get clarity on funding and got a reply on Wednesday.
“He did say the HSE have it, but last week at the North East Regional Drugs Task Force the HSE representative said ‘we don’t have the money’, so hopefully it is now there.”
The bishop said the murder of Keane Mulready Woods was “so shocking and so terrible” it was bound to make the national media and cause an outcry but said the focus on now moved on.
He said the level of intimidation over drug debts in Drogheda was still very high and cited one case.
“There was family in Drogheda recently, their house thrashed and family pet beaten up. The plumbing fixtures were pulled out and the family ended up on street for a number of hours. They had to get a hotel and pay for it themselves — there was no [state] response.”
He said the problem is not just an urban issue, and that details were heard at a meeting of the regional drugs and alcohol task force last week about addiction and drug debt in rural parts of Cavan and Monaghan.
“One representative said that in the past year, parts of four family farms were sold in order to pay off debts that were run up by a son or daughter who’s an addict,” he said. “For a farmer to sell his land, the lifeblood, is a huge thing.”
Jackie McKenna, co-founder of FASN with her sister Gwen, said they’ve had “no communication” from funders about their funding situation:
She said they just got sponsorship from the Dundalk Credit Union for their 5k FASN Family Fun Run.
“If FASN was to close its doors," she said, "it would cost the HSE and the Government over €1m to set up a similar structure and it would not be peer led.”
She said by the time HSE draw up criteria for the department’s fund and groups get to apply it will be 2022.
The Department of Health said The HSE’s request for funding for the €280,000 family support (€70,000 for North East) “has been approved” by the Department of Health and said the HSE “has responsibility for the delivery of these measures”.
In a statement, HSE head office said: “The HSE have just received the funding for family support from the Department. It will be for the CHO [Community Healthcare Organisations] to allocate in its area.”
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