Kids training next to heroin users ‘shooting up’

From this week’s Galway City Tribune – Young people are training for a city rowing club while addicts are ‘shooting up’ heroin at all times of the day and night on a lane beside them without any fear from the authorities.

That was the claim made by Gerard Nally of Galway Rowing Club, who said his pleas for something to be done about the huge amounts of drugs paraphernalia left beside their boat shed at Waterside have been ignored.

There are very regularly between two and ten people using needles in an area located behind the ‘Plots’ in Woodquay between the old railway line, the rowing club boat shed and the Special Olympics Kayak Club and fronting onto Steamer’s Quay.

The ground is covered with drug paraphernalia such as syringes, empty vials of sterile water, disposable spoons (for ‘cooking up’ the drugs) and dozens of pocked-sized ‘sharps bins’, which are for the disposal of used syringes. The area is also littered with blackened squares of tin foil, which are used for smoking heroin.

“Kids are training in one room and guys shooting up next door,” Mr Nally exclaimed.

“We’ve been on and on to the [City Council] to clean this up and close it off and we’ve been onto councillors, but we don’t seem to be getting anyone to do anything about this. It’s been going on for years.”
This is a preview only. For full coverage and to read the Council statement in full, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. Buy a digital edition of this week’s paper here, or download the app for Android or iPhone.