Irish Examiner view: Cork needs a safe injecting facility

People using hard drugs have been overpowered by an addiction so strong that they are completely oblivious to their surroundings

Needles on the street: Saturday's Irish Examiner, in print and online, includes reports about the prevalence of addiction in Cork City centre. Picture: Noel Sweeney

Sat, 08 Aug, 2026 - 00:55

Readers of the Irish Examiner can read — in print and online — today’s in-depth reporting on Cork’s ongoing problems with open drug dealing and use on the city’s streets.

This is an issue which is not confined to Cork.

Decades ago, the sale and abuse of hard drugs was associated with Dublin, but is now a challenge all over the country.

It is also a particular problem which leads to other, associated challenges. A quick perusal of court reports reveals the motivation behind countless robberies and assaults is often centred on hard drugs — getting the money to service an addiction.

This is a key element which is often missing from discussions of the drug problem, one which is a matter of simple framing — that what we see as a drug issue is in reality an addiction problem with a variety of causes.

It is understandable that those who encounter the reality of open drug use on our streets can be slow to dwell on broader contexts. Stepping over people shooting up in a car park stairwell or witnessing someone inject himself in the groin on a footpath at nine in the morning, as described by one of our contributors, are grim experiences.

They also tell us a story, however.

The people who are using drugs in those circumstances have clearly been overpowered by an addiction so strong that they are completely oblivious to their surroundings, which should give some indication of what addiction truly means.

Those who have been captured by such addiction cannot be abandoned by society. One helpful move would be the provision of a safe injecting facility, and there should be no further delay in providing such a facility in Cork. The Dublin facility has saved lives, and we need to save lives in Cork as well.

What's your view on this issue?

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Primary schools

Parents hard pressed to entertain children of primary school age during the long, hot days of summer are probably dreaming of September and returning to the classroom, but that may come with a caveat.

As reported here by Elaine Loughlin, the Department of Education is to look at primary school hours in a move which could ultimately lead to significant changes in the amount of time children spend in the classroom.

This review is expected to examine the shorter school day for junior and senior infants, for instance, who typically finish school an hour earlier than older primary pupils. This difference in finishing times has long been a challenge for some parents, who may have to collect younger children before returning later in the day to pick up older siblings.

The review is also expected to examine the length of breaks and lunch times during the school day, an interesting focus given the Oireachtas education committee recently recommended that Irish schools should adopt the Finnish model, where children have regular 15-minute breaks throughout the school day.

Should other factors also be considered by this review? Niamh Griffin reported this week on delays facing older patients in our hospital system, with the HSE acknowledging that seasonal factors such as higher numbers of patients with “health complications of heat stress” may be contributing to those delays.

Our primary schools have been shut during the most recent heatwave, but readers will recall that we also had very hot weather during May, with temperatures exceeding 30C in several locations.

If we are to face even more extreme weather conditions in the future thanks to climate change, then the forthcoming Department of Education review may have more issues to consider.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

Road Bowling

A quintessentially Irish sport is seeking international recognition. Ból Chumann na hÉireann, road bowling's national governing body, has called for the sport to be included on Ireland’s Unesco cultural heritage list. Their case looks convincing.

Unesco (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) maintains that cultural heritage is not just a matter of monuments and collections of objects: It also includes traditions or living expressions which are inherited from ancestors and passed on.

Hurling, for instance, was inscribed in 2018 on Unesco’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. According to Unesco, it is “considered as an intrinsic part of Irish culture and plays a central role in promoting health and wellbeing, inclusiveness, and team spirit”, a description which could certainly be applied to road bowling as well.

Articulating the case for road bowling is Ból Chumann na hÉireann honorary secretary Séamus Ó Tuama, long-standing bowling columnist of the Irish Examiner.

This week he told RTÉ that road bowling: “...developed on this island... across communities, all kinds of people played it, it’s completely unique — there is nothing like it anywhere in the world, and the origins of the game are lost in time, we don’t actually know where it came from... But it is a unique part of our heritage.