'There's not enough help' - mother who lost three sons to drug addiction

RTÉ News​

19-05-2025

A Cork mother whose three sons were addicted to drugs and died - two of them just 15 days apart - is appealing to the Government to help families like hers.
Christine Kavanagh's 30-year-old son Dillon died of a suspected overdose in January.
Just 15 days earlier, her 36-year-old son Damien died in his apartment in Wales.
Another son, Leon, died in 2021 of a heroin overdose.
Dillon and Damien's deaths were so close together they held a double funeral.
"We'd one open coffin, we'd one closed," Christine recalls.
In her first television interview, Christine tells Upfront with Katie Hannon about the pain of losing her sons.
"If I could take this pain away from another family, to [not] go through what we're going through," she said.
"The pain that we have to carry seven days a week is unbelievable. "I can't grieve until I heal and it's very, very hard.
"People will say to me, 'How are you coping?' It's the love of my other children that I have to face every day and my grandchildren".
Christine said there needs to be more services offered to help people affected by addiction.
"There's not enough help there for addiction and mental health," she said.
"Mental health always comes with addiction."
Christine told Upfront that policymakers need to listen to her and people like her.
"I'm only one voice but I know there's probably thousands of voices that could be like me," she said.
"I just feel there's nothing being done for people with addiction and mental health [issues]".
'My children might have been saved'
Christine recalls the circumstances of her son Leon's death as "desperate".
"He was found down the lane with heroin spoons, needles, everything," she said.
Christine said she wants to see a supervised injection centre in Cork to help people like her sons – this would mean her sons can inject illegal substances under the supervision of trained health professionals.
"They can go, they can inject, they can be supervised," Christine explained. "My two children might have been saved if they were inside in a centre."
December 2024 saw the opening of Ireland's first medically supervised injection facility at Merchants Quay in Dublin on a pilot basis for a maximum period of 18 months.
The Department of Health told Upfront: "The current Programme for Government commits to explore the establishment of mobile medically supervised injecting facilities (MSIF) in areas of need.
"The MSIF will be evaluated over the 18-month pilot phase and the findings will inform decisions about the continuation of the Dublin facility and the development of new facilities in other regions," it added.
Figures from the National Drug-Related Deaths Index show there were 354 drug poisoning deaths recorded in 2021, 409 reported in 2020 - which were recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic - and 371 in 2019.
Christine said the drugs were a 'sickness' that took over her children.
"I never blamed my children for being addicts," she said.
"I know it's a sickness - I never, never blamed them. It's this heroin that robbed my children."
Christine said no other family should have to go through what she did.
"I have to keep going and I will keep going as long as I can," she said.
"I feel guilty thinking could I have done more for them. But we know we've done everything we could for them.
"I just feel something will have to be done because [drugs] are taking our children one by one," she added.