Heroin use has increased up to fourfold in rural Ireland with dealers targeting towns and villages with no treatment centres, it emerged today.
One of the country's leading detox facilities revealed drug addiction has increased most outside Dublin over the last four years, particularly in disadvantaged and neglected areas.
Outreach workers in Portlaoise, Co Laois, believe up to 600 users in the town could be taking heroin behind closed doors.
Tony Geoghegan, of Merchants Quay Ireland, also fears the recession could plunge more men and women into drug and alcohol dependency as financial ruin and growing unemployment sweeps across the country.
"Next year people will get more into difficult financial circumstances, have problems with housing, and face unemployment," said Mr Geoghegan.
"They are also more likely to get involved in the black market. "To cope with homelessness they will use drugs as an escape and get trapped." In the depression of the 1980s heroin swamped Dublin's working class suburbs.
There are now an estimated 16,000 heroin users in the country, with less than 30 drug detox beds nationwide and no support centres in the midlands.
Mr Geoghegan said the full extent of addiction outside Dublin is unknown as it is taken by a hidden population, but he stressed the problems are further exacerbated by a severe lack of facilities.
Drug addiction workers maintain since the organisation set up a needle exchange service in Portlaoise, users "have been coming out of the woodwork."
More than 50 men and women - aged from 18 to 38 - are already being seen by staff while another 100 are on a waiting list.
Gardai and addicts also claim there is a growing epidemic and dismiss an official report that recorded just 18 heroin users in the town three years ago and a judge who later stated the figure was around 200.
With a population of around 14,500, the town could have one of the highest rates of usage per capita.
But its drug scene is different than the stereotypical sight of addicts on Dublin's city streets dealing openly or begging for their next fix. In Portlaoise most addicts live in clean apartment blocks or tidy housing estates with their parents, attracting little attention from neighbours.
One garda said heroin use was a huge problem, with users travelling from surrounding towns and villages for a score. "It is surprising how much of it is around," said a garda.
"It is behind closed doors in so much that they are not going down laneways and shooting up, they are going back to a flat to smoke it. They're not as strung out as in Dublin.
"But it is obvious what's happening when you see groups waiting around for it.
"It's more readily available in recent years and unfortunately more acceptable." Mr Geoghegan said while cocaine remains in the media limelight, heroin is continuing to wreck lives.
"The nature of addiction is that people do want to change, but equally they're addicted and unless you're able to seize on motivation when people are motivated it's very difficult to work with them," he added.
"You have people on waiting lists and people having to travel around to try and get access to treatment which are huge disadvantages and barriers for people.
"Cocaine is very popular in that it appeals to a wider section of society who might see heroin as a dirty or heavy drug. But heroin is more visible, is more widely used than cocaine, and it is certainly more problematic than cocaine.
"It has a much stronger dependency for addiction and of course it has stronger links with poverty and disadvantage."
PA