'This is real': Retired Assistant Commissioner warns we must prepare for fentanyl surge

Former Garda Assistant Commissioner Pat Leahy warned that a fentanyl drug scource is on its way and we had better prepare for it. Picture: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Fentanyl will ravage Irish communities unless we prepare for it now, according to a former Garda Assistant Commissioner.

Pat Leahy, who was former Assistant Commissioner for the Dublin area, also predicted that the synthetic drug is likely to spread more quickly than heroin did.

He was speaking on The Brendan O’Connor Show on RTÉ Radio 1 on Sunday. 

It follows an interview by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar with the Irish Examiner in which he said that Ireland must prepare for a surge in fentanyl use which could spark a rise in drug deaths and homelessness.

Mr Leahy said: “This is coming. We know it's coming. It is going to ravage our communities unless we prepare for it now.

We certainly have to get around the table and first acknowledge that it's going to happen.” 

Adding that while fentanyl is a painkiller given on prescription by doctors in the US, he warned: “It is so effective for those that are addicted to drugs, in particular heroin. It is just off the scales.” 

He said 75,000 drug overdose deaths were associated with fentanyl in the US in 2022 alone.

Mr Leahy also said: “It will spread more quickly than heroin ever did, because heroin was confined for decades into little pockets where social deprivation was the order of the day” .

When asked if the recent comments regarding fentanyl were scaremongering, Mr Leahy stressed: “This is real.” 

Mr Varadkar’s comments, made in New York, followed the revelation that Irish-American actor Angus Cloud died from an accidental drug overdose which included fentanyl.

His comments also followed the death of a one-year-old, Nicholas Dominici, and the hospitalisation of three others after being exposed to the opioid at a daycare facility in the Bronx. It is suspected the death resulted from a fentanyl overdose. 

The children at the facility were aged between eight months and two years old, and police believe they inhaled fentanyl at the nursery. 

Mr Varadkar told the Irish Examiner that the death of a toddler in a childcare centre was "scary".