Cork's heroin problem: How did we get here?

Cork's Northside was first identified as a heroin blackspot by the Ministerial Task Force in 1996. File picture: Eddie O'Hare

This week in Cork District Court there was the case of a mother who was in front of the judge charged with neglect, relating to an incident in 2017 where gardaí came across her and her partner injecting heroin in a cabin at the back of a derelict house in front of her three-year-old son. 

How did we get to this? This type of case is something we’ve heard about in other cities like Dublin, Liverpool and Manchester but not Cork. How did Cork get to this point?