Our school around the corner from city’s new drug injection centre
A PRINCIPAL has asked why schools are not allowed to have fast food restaurants within 400m in Wicklow – but the new legal drug injection centre in Dublin is to be based within 300m of her school.
The comments come as residents and businesses in inner city Dublin have asked why Taoiseach Leo Varadkar who helped Donald Trump with a planning issue with his golf course in Clare, but won’t listen to their concerns about the centre.
The country’s first supervised injection centre – where the misuse of drugs act will be suspended – is due to be located at Merchants Quay in Dublin by the end of the year, if it gets through planning. The centre is within 300m of Dublinia, a child-friendly museum beside Christchurch Cathedral.
Over 200 pupils attend St Audoen’s National School in Dublin 8, located right behind Merchants Quay Ireland, where the State’s first supervised injection centre is due to be located, if permission is granted.
A pre-school is also located on the school grounds, where they have had to install electronic gates to prevent drug use on their site. The school’s management has engaged a legal team to fight the proposal
Eilish Meagher, principal of St Audoen’s said they will face ‘critical child-protection issues’ and fear for the ‘dangers’ children may face if the centre opens.
She told the Irish Mail on Sunday that parents are ‘deeply upset and distressed’ by the proposal, which they were not consulted on despite Government assurances that consultation would be sought.
Ms Meagher said Wicklow councillors voted to impose a ban on fast-food restaurants being built within a 400m radius of schools in a bid to curb childhood obesity.
‘Yet we are in a situation where a needle-exchange programme and now a drug injection centre are to operate within 300m of a primary school,’ she said.
‘This is a critical child-protection concern. There is no mention of regulation or legislation regarding the distribution and selling of illegal drugs... in the vicinity of a childcare setting,’ she added.
‘If the Taoiseach can take a phone call from the president of another country and interfere on the location of a wind farm and its potential negative impact on a golf course, I wonder how he would feel about a heroin injection centre beside a primary school?’ asked Martin Harte, head of the Temple Bar Company, which represents the area’s traders and cultural groups. anne.sheridan@mailonsunday.ie