In December 2022, Hildegarde Naughton TD was appointed as the new Minister of State with responsibility for Public Health, Wellbeing and the National Drugs Strategy, as well as Government Chief Whip. Minister Naughton has been a Fine Gael TD for Galway West since 2016. Her ministerial role focuses on the promotion of healthier lifestyles and policies to improve the health of people in Ireland, including overseeing the delivery of Ireland’s national drugs strategy, Reducing Harm, Supporting Recovery 2017-2025.

Problematic opioid use is a significant problem in Ireland and across the world. However, measuring the prevalence of opioid use is challenging. Given the nature of this population, a simple head count is not feasible and general population surveys are known to be ineffective at capturing this ‘hidden’ population. Because people who use drugs fear stigmatisation and are often marginalised in society, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) recommends the use of indirect approaches, such as the capture–recapture (CRC) method, to estimate the prevalence of problematic (high-risk) drug users.

In December 2022, Taoiseach Micheál Martin TD launched the Dublin North East Inner City (NEIC) initiative’s 2022 progress report. Since its establishment in 2017, the NEIC’s vision is of ‘making the North East Inner City a safe, attractive, and vibrant living and working environment for the community and its families with opportunities for all to lead full lives’ (p. 6). This most recent progress report describes the activities undertaken in 2022 to meet this aim.

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has published a report outlining key factors to inform policy for the collection, use, and sharing of health and social care information in Ireland. The report identifies four areas in which progress is needed to develop a robust health information environment that will allow stakeholders to make choices and decisions based on the best available information.

In recognition of the harmful effects of alcohol use in the European Region, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that measures be put in place to reduce population-level alcohol use. One such recommendation is minimum unit pricing (MUP). MUP specifically targets the heaviest drinkers who buy the cheapest alcohol. By reducing its affordability, less alcohol will be purchased and consumed, reducing the harm that alcohol causes to people who drink and others.

The event ‘Addiction Recovery: The Gap between Scientific Evidence and Political Will’ was held in Trinity College Dublin on Friday, 11 November 2022. The event was hosted by Professor Jo-Hanna Ivers, an associate professor in addiction at the university. The overarching theme of the event was addiction recovery under which six presentations were made by international experts on the topic. These experts came from the universities of Leeds and Birmingham in the United Kingdom and Stanford and Harvard in the United States.

A study examining the experience of mental health professionals working with clients who have experienced problem alcohol use in the home during childhood was conducted in collaboration with University College Cork and the Silent Voices initiative of Alcohol Action Ireland.

The latest edition of Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity was published in November 2022 following on from the success of the previous two editions. The third edition provides an updated examination of alcohol-related harms globally, while also updating and critically reviewing the scientific evidence of global alcohol control policies.

Across most high-income countries, youth drinking is in decline and researchers are increasingly focusing on the nature and underlying reasons for this decline. To explore this phenomenon, the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol held a thematic meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, titled ‘Youth Drinking in Decline’. This three-day event held at Systembolaget conference facility on the island of Skarpö outside Stockholm

In Ireland and internationally, there has been much attention on the growing popularity of nitrous oxide. In response, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) has published a report on nitrous oxide in Europe in order to increase awareness and to help stakeholders prepare for and respond to public health and social threats associated with nitrous oxide. As part of the EMCDDA report, the Health Research Board (HRB) compiled a case report on the current situation regarding nitrous oxide in Ireland.

Since 2006, the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study, a national longitudinal study of children and young people, has followed a cohort of children born in 1998. Four waves of interviews have been conducted with this cohort, when they were aged 9, 13, 17–18, and 20 years old.

The eight wave of the Healthy Ireland Survey, carried out by Ipsos and commissioned by the Department of Health, involves a representative sample from the general population aged 15 years and over to increase knowledge of the population’s health and health behaviours.

The Planet Youth programme is being implemented in an increasing number of regions in Ireland. There are currently six Planet Youth sites at various stages of implementation: Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Fingal, Cavan, and Monaghan. Since the start of 2022, the three latter regions have published reports from their first waves of survey data. The reports present an overview of baseline data on health and wellbeing indicators as well as associated risk and protective factors.

The 2020 annual report from National Self-Harm Registry Ireland was published in 2022. The report contains information relating to every recorded presentation of deliberate self-harm to acute hospital emergency departments in Ireland in 2020 and complete national coverage of cases treated. All individuals who were alive on admission to hospital following deliberate self-harm were included, along with the methods of deliberate self-harm that were used. Accidental overdoses of medication, street drugs, or alcohol were not included.

Opioids are the main drug group implicated in drug overdose deaths in Ireland. Naloxone is an antidote for opioid overdose that reverses the depressant effects of opioids such as heroin. Following a successful pilot of the Naloxone Demonstration Project in 2015, the Health Service Executive (HSE) developed a naloxone training programme for service providers. However, there has been little evaluation of the expanded naloxone programme since its initial pilot phase. A 2022 report aimed to provide an assessment of the impact of the provision of naloxone and training to addiction and homeless service providers in Ireland. This article highlights the main findings.

The annual report for 2021 for Coolmine was launched on 15 November 2022. The launch was held in Ashleigh House, Dublin, which is Coolmine’s residential service for women and children. Ashleigh House is part of a suite of addiction services provided by the organisation, offering community and day services, as well as residential services for women and their children, and men. Services are delivered across 13 facilities, including those in the Mid-West and South West, which were established in 2021.

The Sláintecare report by the all-party Committee on the Future of Healthcare and the Sláintecare Implementation Strategy are the key policy documents outlining the Irish Government’s commitment to a system of universal healthcare and the mechanisms by which it is to be implemented.

The Pobal HP Deprivation Index, developed by Haase and Pratschke in 2017, uses 2016 Census data to determine relative scores of disadvantage or affluence for Ireland’s 18,488 Small Areas (SA). This index is Ireland’s primary social gradient tool used regularly for the allocation of State resources to target community-level disadvantage.

This article presents the most recently available drug and alcohol data on treatment demand, general population prevalence, and opioid prevalence analysed by regional health area in Ireland.

The Health Research Board (HRB) National Drugs Library has a new online resource that provides regional data on alcohol and other drugs. There are nine Community Healthcare Organisations (CHOs) in Ireland whose services are delivered through the Health Service Executive (HSE) and its funded agencies.