Expert nurses excluded from drugs policy committee invited to meet minister

Minister Frank Feighan, who has responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy. Picture. Keith Arkins Media

The minister with responsibility for the national drugs strategy has asked to meet with a group of nurses who are experts in addiction after they criticised their exclusion from a national committee overseeing drugs policy.

The Irish Examiner reported this morning how the Ireland Chapter of the International Nurses Society on Addiction (IntNSA) had been removed from the National Oversight Committee on Drugs, an expert group set up to help implement various priorities on the national drugs strategy.

IntNSA had been represented on the committee having been invited by the then-minister, Catherine Byrne. But when the NOC was reconfigured last year, they were not included.

A letter from the minister, Frank Feighan, was sent to the group last Friday, in which he said he had been "unable to appoint everyone who expressed an interest in membership of the NOC".

Offence 'unintended'

A departmental statement had accompanied the convening of the reformed committee in December, and in the letter, Minister Feighan told the group: "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."

The group had queried how the process had been handled and communicated and said it believed its range of expertise would have assisted the NOC as attempts to reach its targets across the rest of the term of the strategy, which runs until 2025.

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The Ireland Chapter of IntNSA was established in 2016, the first outside of the United States, and has more than 50 members. It had been invited by the then-minister, Catherine Byrne, to appoint a representative to the NOC.

Recommendations made by the group to the minister in May last year include provision for nurse prescribing of opiate substitution therapy (OST), independent inspection and regulation of addiction treatment services by HIQA, and a national database of treatment services with improved training and education of staff. It said it would sit on sub-groups of the NOC, at the request of the minister, "under protest".

Following the criticism from IntNSA, a statement from the minister's department said: "The minister acknowledges the contribution of the representatives of IntNSA in the development and oversight of the national drugs strategy. He notes that IntNSA will continue to be involved in the implementation of the strategy through the new strategic implementation groups being established, as part of the national oversight committee.

Concerns

"The minister has invited the organisation to meet with him to discuss their concerns."

A board member of IntNSA, Dr Peter Kelly, said the group had not yet received the invite but would welcome any opportunity to meet with Minister Feighan "with a view to finding real and concrete resolutions to the issues that we have outlined".

It is the second time in the last month that disputes over departmental restructuring of the National Oversight Committee have emerged.

In early December, CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign appeared before the Oireachtas Health Committee and accused the department and Minister Feighan of trying to remove their representation on the committee. Following this appearance, that particular issue appears to have abated.

Minister Feighan is due before the committee next Wednesday on this and other issues.