Public mislead on Methadone Clinic
The furore surrounding the possible locating of a methadone clinic in a HSE centre at the new Civic Centre has caused outrage but is this due to scaremongering or a genuine belief that Gorey will be overrun with heroin addicts.
The facts are that the HSE is planning is set up a methadone prescription service at the Mental Health Day Hospital which will begin operating soon in the Civic Centre. It will operate for a total of three hours per week. No methadone will be dispensed at the site.
The Clinic will be used by people attempting to rid themselves of heroin addiction in the north of the county. No one from any other county will be accommodated in the Clinic.
Currently those people in Gorey who want to get off heroin have to travel to Waterford or Dublin to attend a GP who can prescribe methadone. GPs need to be specially trained to dispense methadone and none of the GPs in Gorey are so trained.
However once the prescription has been received the users they travel back to Gorey where a number of pharmacies currently dispense methadone – and have done so for many years.
At the moment a number of GPs in Co. Wexford have received – from the HSE – training in relation to dispensing methadone which will eventually eliminate the need for methadone users to travel to Waterford or Dublin.
So there it is. Methadone users have been in Gorey for many, many years and have received the drug from pharmacies in the area for many, many years. They have been among us for a long time yet now that a specialised centre is being talked about, a sense of fear has been instilled among the public who are looking to oppose the measure being brought to their town.
The problem surrounding the establishment of the Clinic, which will offer users a full aftercare service, is that the HSE need to apply to Wexford County Council for a change of use to the existing premises.
This will allow those opposed to the Clinic to lodge complaints and delay the Clinic interminably. While the Wexford County Council planners may give the go ahead for the clinic a large number of prominent public representatives have said they would appeal the decision to An Bord Pleanála.
A series of public meetings have been held in the town to ‘inform’ people about the situation, though a lot of what has been said has been scaremongering. Initially the people were told the clinic would be a dispensing clinic with users from all over the South East descending on Gorey just to get their fix – even though pharmacies in the town have been and continue to dispense the drug on a daily basis.
There will be no easy solution to this problem and it is set to run and run.