Retired judge fears potential impact of opiates like fentanyl

Olann Kelleher is concerned by reports that fentanyl could be used as a replacement for heroin

Olann Kelleher said that because drugs such as fentanyl, are both cheap and highly potent, they could have a terrible impact on the street. Picture: David Keane

A retired Cork judge has expressed concern at the potential impact toxic synthetic opiates would have if they are used by drug dealers to fill any future gap in the heroin market.

Olann Kelleher of Anglesea District Court said that because these drugs, such as fentanyl, are both cheap and highly potent, they could have a terrible impact on the street.

In an interview with the Irish Examiner, he said he was concerned by reports that fentanyl could be used as a replacement for heroin, if there was a shortage of the drug.

This feared shortage is because of a crackdown, launched in 2022, by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan on the production of opium, from which heroin is made.

Afghanistan is responsible for almost all of the heroin trafficked into Europe.

“If that [fentanyl] comes in and it’s cheap, it will be a problem,” Mr Kelleher said.

The Irish Examiner reported last month that the country’s biggest heroin gang — led by brothers in west Dublin — had travelled with other European gangs to South America to discuss with Mexican cartels the logistics behind the possible importation of fentanyl into Europe.

Earlier this month, Justice Minister Helen McEntee said the drug was likely to arrive on Irish shores "eventually".

This month, the HSE said it was not aware of any seizures of fentanyl by An Garda Síochána to date nor had there been any laboratory analytical confirmation about fentanyl being detected recently in Ireland.

It said no hospital emergency departments have reported presentations associated with fentanyl and that no individual had presented for treatment citing fentanyl.

It said the emergence of synthetic opioids on the European drug market was being “monitored closely” by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and by local officials in Ireland.

Judge Kelleher said he was concerned by reports that fentanyl could be used as a replacement for heroin, if there was a shortage of the drug. File picture: iStock

It said the Irish EU Drug Agency Focal Point, the Health Research Board, and the HSE were developing a new Early Warning System for emerging drugs.

An article last week in the British Medical Journal warned that a group of synthetic opiates called nitazenes had entered the British market.

The BBC reported recently that nitazenes were also present in the North.

The article said nitazenes were several hundred times stronger than morphine and were implicated in over more than 30 deaths in Birmingham alone in June and July of this year.

Retiring from the bench after serving over 14 years, Judge Kelleher said the number of heroin-related cases that were coming before him had “dropped significantly”.

Praised by colleagues and local health professionals as having a strong social conscience, Judge Kelleher said it was an “horrific life” for those living on the streets, where alcohol and heroin addiction, mental health issues, and homelessness meant life was “tough”.

In his interview, he repeatedly said people with addiction or mental health problems living on the streets, and wider society, would be “better off” if the €80,000 to €90,000 it cost to put them up in jail for a year was spent on recruiting two social workers.

Judge Kelleher’s “pioneering” health diversion programme for young people caught in possession of cocaine for their personal use was praised at the citizens’ assembly on drugs, where its expansion was recommended.

At his retirement function, the president of the District Court, Judge Peter Kelly, said this programme was “something that should be replicated” across the country.