Life & Style

Meet the London Irishman taking on Dublin’s drug problem with the power of compassion

GROWING up in London in the 1980s, Tony Duffin was acutely aware of the desperate situation many alcoholics and drug addicts consigned to the city’s streets found themselves in.

The sight of despairing men and women taking to filthy lanes and side streets to ensure they could get their next high ignited a passion within him to help, but he didn’t always know how.

His desire to help the homeless – particularly those with addictions – lead him to become Director of the Ana Liffey Drug Project in Dublin, where homeless people have an average life expectancy of just 42.

Established in 1982, the charity works with over 2,000 vulnerable people a year and has made huge strides in pushing the case for safe injecting clinics in the Irish capital.

“It was obvious growing up in the London Irish community that alcohol and drinking culture was a deeply ingrained issue,” Duffin told The Irish Post.

“Street drinking was very common and that opened my eyes to the problem of homelessness and particularly to addiction on the streets.

“The situation was incredibly dire in the 1980s and things are particularly bad again, so work such as mine is as relevant as ever.”

Duffin, whose parents are from Wexford, traces the beginnings of his interest in issues of street homelessness back to those early years, when lanes full of needles, bloody tissues and human excrement were a common sight.

“I don’t know what it was but I was drawn in my teenage years to help those people, but I could never have known where it would lead me and I certainly wasn’t aware that a career path such as mine was even possible.”

The early 1990s in London were a time of recession, increasing the amount of people living on the streets and even having a deep impact on Duffin himself.

It was after losing his job as a photographer and finding himself out of work for eight months that he investigated the possibility of volunteering with charities based in London.

His lifelong interest in issues of addiction lead him to volunteer at an emergency night shelter in Soho, where he began helping young people aged between 17 and 25 out on the streets.

Being only in his early 20s himself, Duffin found that his inbuilt desire to improve the circumstances of the homeless was intensifying.

“Working with Centre Point in Dean Street was a real eye-opener because it introduced me to the wider problems of homelessness – such as violence and selling sex on the streets.

“I realised I wanted to engage with the hardest to reach people, those who have complex and multiple needs, who require complex harm-reduction services to keep them safe.”

Dublin's homeless community grew by 35 per cent in 2016 alone (Picture: Peter Varga)

During his time volunteering, Duffin and his colleagues worked to get as many people off the streets as possible and provide ‘low-threshold’ services for the hardest hit – meaning that no one was turned away, no matter how complex their problems.

Giving hope to people who had lost their own drove Duffin forward, and convinced him that what began as a volunteering pursuit would evolve into his life’s work.

“It was around that time that I realised this was something I wanted to do not only then but going forward into the future as a young man in his 20s.

“I didn’t know where this new passion would take me but I knew that, wherever I ended up, it would involve helping those with addictions.”

Duffin’s volunteering role on Dean Street lead him to work in other homeless shelters in London, as well as rehabs, detox clinics and outreach services.

Towards the end of the 1990s he and his wife Sarah – whose parents hail from Kerry – decided to leave London for Ireland.

The couple made the move in the summer of 2000 during Ireland’s Celtic Tiger boom, when frontline services such as those Duffin was interested in enjoyed no shortage of funding.

“My first job in Dublin was with the Catholic charity SVP, where I worked as a manager for Dublin Simon Community for a year providing emergency accommodation for the homeless.

“I learnt a lot about the situation of street addiction in Ireland and it opened my eyes to the aspects of policy that still needed to change.”

Working with the Ana Liffey Drug Project since 2005, Tony began to champion improvement in the treatment of people affected by substance abuse.

The charity’s mission statement is “for a society where all people affected by problem substance use are treated with dignity and respect and have access to quality services.”

It didn’t take long for Duffin to realise that people taking drugs in filthy alleys and back streets was a bad deal both for addicts and the general public too.

That led the charity to be at the forefront of the recent push for supervised drug injecting facilities in the city centre – many of which will be piloted later this year.

“My work at the Ana Liffey gave me access to the world of lobbyists and politicians, people who can really institute change.

“We believed deeply in the idea of supervised injecting, we lobbied and we gathered support for their provision, particularly in Dublin.”

Tony with Catherine Byrne TD, Minister of State with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy and Public Health.

The push for supervised injecting services has received criticism from some who suggest they will have a negative impact on the area and will increase anti-social behaviour and drug dealing– but Tony is convinced of the opposite.

He explained: “I know people find it a little unusual to think of 16 people sitting in a room injecting themselves, but it isn’t as strange as people might think.

“Believe me after 25 years of working in this field, safe places addicts can go to inject drugs improves the situation for everyone.

“I’ve worked in supervised injecting facilities in Sydney where they first became prominent – and I’ve seen how much they can change the local area for the better.

“When we open them in Dublin City Centre later this year, you’ll see a reduction in antisocial behaviour caused by drug taking while improving the dignity of those worst affected.

“It’s a good deal for everyone.”

Some detractors of supervised injecting facilities see them as promoting drug use through improving safety standards and comfort for addicts, but Duffin says the services only reduce harm.

“I’m not saying it’s the cure for everything, and they’re certainly not needed everywhere, but I can say it will improve lives and improve Dublin’s streets.”

Duffin says he is very proud to have helped get the Misuse of Drugs (Supervised Injecting Facilities) Act 2017 through the Dáil in May this year – paving the way for what he argues is “the first permissive, progressive legislation of its kind in Ireland.

“It passed on May 16 – so five years, three months and 27 days after I started working at Ana Liffey – that’s 1944 days!” Tony says with a laugh.

There are now over 6,000 people living homeless in Ireland, with Dublin's homeless population rising by a staggering 35 per cent in 2016 alone.

According to recent research by Dublin Simon Community, 31 per cent of Ireland's homeless population are addicted to drugs, while over half abuse alcohol on a regular basis.

“The problem isn’t getting any better," Duffin says. "There are now far more drugs that are far more potent when I was a kid – when the main issue was by far heroin addiction.

“I would say from my own experience at Ana Liffey that during those five years of lobbying, that things have got worse in Dublin.

“So something like supervised injection facilities – something which will finally create real change – couldn’t be coming at a better time.”