Expert nursing group removed from National Drugs Strategy

Frank Feighan, who has responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy. Picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie

An expert nursing body that had been due to help oversee the implementation of the latest National Drugs Strategy has hit out at Frank Feighan, the minister in charge, saying it feels a "deep sense of insult and sadness" over how it was removed from the process.

The Ireland Chapter of international Nurses Society on Addiction (IntNSA) queried the decision by the minister, who has responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy, to exclude the group from the National Oversight Committee [NOC] on Drugs, and claimed there was "a significant lack of transparency and extremely poor communication from the Drugs Policy Unit around the entire consultation process relating to reform of the NOC".

Mr Feighan convened the first meeting of the reconfigured oversight committee on the national drugs strategy for 2021 to 2025 last December, outlining six strategic priorities for the remaining four years of the strategy.

But IntNSA said the recent changes to the NOC had left it outside the process, despite its previous involvement and its expertise as the only representative body for nurses working in addictions in Ireland.

The Ireland Chapter of IntNSA was established in 2016, the first outside of the United States, and has more than 50 members. 

It had previously been invited by the then-minister Catherine Byrne to appoint a representative to the NOC.

The Irish branch of IntNSA, which is due to issue a statement today, also provided a letter it received from the minister last week in which he said: "The delay in notifying you of my decision to reduce the number of appointees and not to continue with your membership of the NOC, and the resulting confusion, is very much regretted, and any offence caused was completely unintended."

However, that has done little to ease the criticism from the nursing group, which said: "The Ireland Chapter of IntNSA wish to express our deep sense of insult and sadness in relation the removal of our nursing group from the National Oversight Committee [NOC] on Drugs by Minister Frank Feighan following recent reform of the NOC.

This decision was made by Minister Feighan without providing an acceptable explanation, and in the midst of a global pandemic when our frontline members have made great sacrifices to ensure that services will run effectively.

"Our upset is compounded by the fact that during a meeting with us on July 7, 2021, Minister Feighan referred to us as ‘the backbone of the services’, but subsequently removed us from the NOC only months later.

"We have also expressed concerns in private to Minister Feighan relating to other aspects of oversight relating to the implementation of the drugs strategy," the group said. 

"We regret to say that Minister Feighan has either ignored our concerns, or not provided meaningful responses to these."

The chapter of the nursing body acknowledged an offer from the minister to sit on sub-groups of the NOC, adding that it had decided to nominate to these ‘under protest’.

Recommendations made by the group to the Minister in May last year include provision for nurse prescribing of opiate substitution therapy, independent inspection and regulation of addiction treatment services by the Health Information and Quality Authority, and a national database of treatment services with improved training and education of staff.

A response was sought from the department to the claims made by the nursing group.