Having "all our services for vulnerable people in the same areas" leads to "social problems", Shane Coleman has said.
Ireland's first medically supervised injection facility is due to open its doors this month at Merchants Quay Ireland’s Riverbank facility in Dublin city centre.
The facility will be located in the basement of the building and will provide a clean and supervised space where IV drug users can use pre-obtained drugs under the supervision of trained medical professionals.
It is hoped that this will bring some of the city's drug use away from surrounding streets, while also helping to limit overdoses and the transmission of infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C.
On Newstalk Breakfast, presenter Shane Coleman said he was “not going to question people who know a lot more about this”.
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“People who work in this area have been calling for this for years, and I bow to their greater knowledge,” he said.
“I respect where they're coming from, I think they do extraordinary work in this area.
"So, if they say this will help and this is needed and [that] stigmatisation does nothing and this is a way of helping those people and treating them well - then who am I to argue?”
Shane said his “one slight concern” is that all services for vulnerable people are put into the same “rough area of Dublin”.
“We do tend to put all our services for vulnerable people in a fairly small area and I think inevitably that leads to social problems,” he said.
“I'm in no way stigmatising those people, I don't mean to in any way do that, but that is the inevitable consequence.”
While the safe injection centre is a “welcome development” Shane thinks it's “an issue we need to be conscious of”.
"It does cause issues"
Fellow presenter Ciara Kelly agreed with Shane, saying she thinks he is “fully right”.
“I remember hearing when everyone was going ‘ah, the North inner city is in a jocker’ and all that kind of stuff, people who are experts in this area were saying there was 2,500 very vulnerable people living in about a square mile of one bit of the city,” she said.
“By very vulnerable, I mean people who would have significant addiction problems, mental health problems, homeless people, etc
“It is very concentrated and it does cause issues.”
Ciara said the reason why Dublin puts services where it does is because people in areas like Ranelagh or Clontarf or “places like that” would object to these services opening in their communities.
“I think there would be uproar and I think we would never get it opened,” she said.
The only places you can “get these kinds of services opened” is the inner city, Ciara said.
Split image of Shane Coleman (R) and an injection (L).
