Drug treatment patterns are monitored on the National Drug Treatment Reporting System (NDTRS). Although this is a comprehensive case-based database (maintained by the Health Research Board), it does not contain all episodes of patients receiving Opioid Agonist Treatment (OAT). These are recorded on the Central Treatment List (maintained by the National Drug Treatment Centre) which is a register of all individual patients receiving OAT. To accurately reflect treatment provision, there is a need to utilise both datasets. This Insights Report provides an overview of drug treatment patterns in Ireland from 2014-2021 by supplementing data recorded on the NDTRS with that recorded on the Central Treatment List (CTL).

Drug treatment data was obtained for the NDTRS and CTL. CTL data for OAT was reconfigured to the same format as that on the NDTRS. Any OAT data on the NDTRS was replaced with the reconfigured CTL data. This was combined with non-OAT opioid treatment (from NDTRS) to give a minimum number receiving drug treatment. Treatment patterns from 2014-2021 are presented, including disaggregation by service provider, drug type, ethnicity, and people experiencing homelessness. The NDTRS data comprises cases commencing treatment within each calendar year (as per the EMCDDA reporting criteria).