The first survey on drug use in the general population was carried out in Ireland in 2002/3 among people aged 15-64. The results were jointly published by the National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD), now the National Advisory Committee on Drugs and Alcohol (NACDA) and the Drug and Alcohol Information and Research Unit. The survey was repeated in 2006/7 and in 2010/11. In 2014, the NACDA commissioned IPSOS MRBI to conduct the Drug Use in Ireland and Northern Ireland Drug Prevalence Survey 2014/15. A sample comprising all households throughout the island of Ireland was randomly selected to participate. Fieldwork began in September 2014 and was completed in May 2015. 

In addition to findings from the previous NACDA drug prevalence surveys (National Advisory Committee on Drugs and Public Health Information and Research Branch 2011), this workbook includes data from the 2014/15 sample pertaining to the Republic of Ireland (National Advisory Committee on Drugs and Alcohol 2016). It also includes data on substance use from waves 1–5 of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey (Gavin, et al. 2015), data from the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) (Taylor, et al. 2016), results from the Growing Up In Ireland (GUI) National Longitudinal Study of Children (Economic and Social Research Institute and Trinity College Dublin 2016) and findings from waves 1–3 on estimates of opioid use in Ireland using a capture-recapture (CRC) analysis (Kelly, et al. 2003) (Kelly, et al. 2009) (Hay, et al.).