Organisations supporting recovering addicts, drug users and their families are calling on the Government to step back from its new national drugs strategy.
Local drug and alcohol taskforces (DATFs) warn that the National Drugs Strategy 2026-2029, due to come into force this year, will “unravel decades of life-saving work” by sidelining communities to centralise decision-making into the HSE.
The strategy, as drafted, will be the first in more than two decades that “fails” to make an explicit link between poverty and drug use, and the first that ends the role of the DATFs in implementing drugs policies at the frontline in affected communities.
They say the strategy is “ignoring” recommendations from the 2024 Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use, the 100-member assembly set up to consider a new model of legislation, policy and service to reduce the harm caused by illicit drugs use.
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While the outgoing strategy – Reducing Harm, Supporting Recovery – which ran in 2017-2025, references the word “local” 87 times, the new one uses the word on just six occasions.
The word “community” appears 149 times in the outgoing strategy, compared with 39 references in the new one.
While the most recent strategy says the DATFs “play a key role in co-ordinating inter-agency action at local level”, the forthcoming strategy instead proposes “HSE health regions” will “create regional structures to co-ordinate the planning, funding and delivery of drug services” – tasks currently delivered by the DATFs.
The health regions’ “governance remit” will be “supported by engagement with stakeholders”, including the taskforces, says the draft strategy.
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Aoife Bairéad is chair of the Canal Communities local DATF that covers Bluebell, Rialto and Inchicore in Dublin, and spokeswoman for the network of local DATFs.
“To consign [the taskforces] to the margins fails to understand the key role [they] have played in informing policy [and] supporting communities, families and individuals caught up in drug addiction,” she says.
She said the network was calling on the Minister of State at the Department of Health with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor “to step back from this draft strategy and for a clear commitment that the role of the taskforces will be maintained and strengthened”.
The 14 local taskforces – 12 in Dublin, one in Cork and one in Bray – were established from 1997 in response to the heroin epidemic engulfing disadvantaged communities and in the aftermath of the 1996 murder of crime journalist Veronica Guerin.
They bring together key local stakeholders including community groups, gardaí, local authorities and the HSE.
The Citizens’ Assembly noted that the DATFs, alongside the community and voluntary sector, have “a crucial role” in the “implementation of the national drugs strategy”.
It called on Government to “ensure effective stakeholder involvement”.
Terry, a 60 year-old former heroin user from Drimnagh, Dublin attributes his recovery to a local project, partially funded by the local DATF.
After more than 40 years in addiction – starting with alcohol and cannabis at the age of 10, and spiralling into heroin and other opioids from his late 20s – he found a “safe place” and “purpose” for the first time in Turas Training in Bluebell, west Dublin.
At the project, he accesses education, training and mentoring along with one-to-one counselling, group therapy and self-care strategies in its five-day-a-week programme.
“Here, I’ve learned why I took the drugs, the reasons why I have reacted in certain ways. It’s all childhood trauma. I understand myself better. I am good now but I know I have to mind myself, ” he says.
Turas Training works with about 60 people a year, impacted by drug and alcohol issues, says manager Trevor Keogh.
It is a member of the Canal Communities local DATF. The leadership role the taskforce plays, in making funding decisions and tailoring national policy to local conditions, was “crucial”, said Keogh, to the capacity of organisations like Turas to respond quickly and appropriately to emerging issues.
“The taskforce is made up of frontline services. We would all meet at least once a month. It’s the central meeting point, it’s where we hear about what’s happening, like if there’s a bad batch of tablets in the area, where are dealers working from, and we can share our knowledge,” said Keogh.
“Those contacts are crucial – to able to pick up the phone and make a referral quickly, knowing who the right person to speak to is. There is a strong, nimble network made possible and supported by the taskforce.”
Keogh said it would be “very concerning” if taskforces became less important in national drugs policy.
“There is a culture, context to that level of co-operation. If that were to change or be lost, I cannot see any benefit to that,” he said.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said the draft strategy had been developed “in consultation with stakeholders including taskforces”.
O’Connor had recently written to the DATFs “seeking their participation in an independently-facilitated engagement process to review the regional governance structures for the strategy and to ensure their alignment with the HSE health regions,” he said.
“It is her intention to strengthen the input of stakeholders into health service planning, to enhance the integration of community-based service within primary care and to involve people with lived and living experience.”
