On 18 May 2004 President Mary McAleese attended the 35th anniversary celebrations of the Drug Treatment Centre Board (DTCB) in the centre’s premises at Trinity Court, Dublin.  The centre is the longest-established treatment service for drug users in Ireland. President McAleese welcomed the opportunity to thank the Board, management and staff for their effort over the last 35 years, and acknowledged the number of lives the centre had helped change: ‘Many thousands of individuals and families have cause to be grateful to you for the treatment, counselling, support and hope you have brought to lives skewed out of kilter by addiction and drug abuse.’

 She noted that the approaches to treatment ranged from an abstinence-only approach to those including substitution therapy and services to support the families of drug users.  She said that this work had strengthened the individual, the family, the community and the country.  She commended individuals with problem drug use for their courage in seeking and continuing in treatment.                      

 The National Drug Advisory and Treatment Service, now known as The Drug Treatment Centre Board (DTCB), was established in 1969.  The service was originally located at the ‘Charitable Infirmary’, Jervis Street Hospital, Dublin 1, which was established in 1718 as the first voluntary hospital in Ireland. The current chairman of the DTCB, Mr Denis McCarthy, is from a long line of family members who have held the chair of the Charitable Infirmary (now known as the Charitable Infirmary Charitable Trust) since 1909. 

 After the closure of Jervis Street Hospital in 1987, the Drug Treatment Centre Board was set up by statutory instrument in 1988 and moved to new premises at Trinity Court, 30-31 Pearse Street, Dublin 2.  The centre has undergone considerable change over the last 35 years and now has a staff of 110, including doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, counsellors, family therapists, childcare workers and laboratory staff.  The DTCB provides on-site hepatitis C testing and its laboratory is the largest specialist drug-screening facility in Ireland, running in excess of one million tests annually.  Inpatient detoxification facilities are located at St Michael’s Ward, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin (10-bed unit) and at Cuan Dara, Cherry Orchard Hospital, Dublin (17-bed unit).  In 2002 there were circa 98,340 attendances at the DTCB.

  President McAleese paid tribute to all those who had worked in the DTCB since its earliest days, and continued, ‘I hope that on this day when we look back over those years and see the difficult journey already successfully travelled, you will find the self-confidence and renewed sense of vocation necessary to face the awesome scale of what lies ahead.’  She stated that drug misuse has become a part of our society and interventions to tackle this problem would be required into the future.  

 The Drug Treatment Centre Board provides a national Drug Analysis Laboratory service which supports treatment policy, and monitors trends which supports service planning and best practice in the treatment of drug misuse.