Yesterday, the Coalition for Better Alcohol Policy gave an Oireachtas briefing to elected members, urging them to name alcohol as a priority in the new National Drugs Strategy currently being developed by the Department of Health.
CEO of Alcohol Forum Ireland, a charity based in Donegal, says that the briefing allowed them to present the real-life stories of those who bear the burden of alcohol harm.
Key speakers included a young woman with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and a woman who is having to arrange privately for her partner to be transferred from a Dublin hospital to Belfast because Alcohol Related Brain Injury services do not exist in our health services.
Paula Leonard says they now hope to sit before the Health Oireachtas Committee as a means to enforce change:
