The Health Service Executive (HSE) is continuing to fund a Peter McVerry Trust drug service with over €300,000 annually, despite a confidential evaluation finding "near-total failure in client engagement".
The 2025 evaluation by the Substance Use Regional Forum (SURF), which channels HSE funding for the project, also found there was "a clear failure to deliver essential services and value for money".
Chris Pender, a director of SURF and a Social Democrats councillor, says the HSE decision "just shows a complete disregard for public funds".
"That's not the HSE's money, it's not the Government's money, that's taxpayer money," he told Prime Time.
The Peter McVerry Trust's ARAS Addiction Service aims to assist the treatment and rehabilitation of people with addiction problems in Kildare.
The SURF, which implements national drug policy in west Wicklow and Kildare, has recommended to the HSE that the service be closed.
Yet, "that decision ultimately lies with the HSE", Cllr Pender said.
"We made the recommendation that the service needed to be wound up. We're talking about like €340,000-ish in public funds. That money needs to be spent correctly."
According to the Service-Level Agreement between the Peter McVerry Trust and the HSE, its drugs treatment project is supposed to provide a drop-in service for drug users, counselling, harm reduction services, day programmes and support for clients in their referral to relevant support services.
However, its location is widely considered too inconvenient for casual drop-ins. For the last 16 months it has been based in an industrial estate located between Newbridge and Naas. It is on a bus route, but is seen - even by the Peter McVerry Trust - as difficult to access.
"It's highly unlikely that people who are really struggling on the street and who are homeless are going to access those services unless they're physically brought there," said Paddy Maher, an experienced mental health and addiction therapist who runs a private practice in Kildare.
Situated upstairs in an industrial building, the McVerry Trust drug treatment service has additional accessibility problems.
"When we're dealing with people who are in chaotic drug use, for instance, people are likely to have mobility issues," Cllr Pender said.
"If an individual has either lost a limb or lost mobility as a result of lack of bone density from drug use, they're not going to be able to access that service," he said, "because it's upstairs".
The evaluation also highlights significant discrepancies between the services described by the Peter McVerry Trust and those observed by the monitoring group.
While the McVerry Trust’s website states that the project offers "HSE harm reduction" services, including needle exchange, the evaluation found that there was "no on‑site HSE presence... resulting in no needle exchange".
The website also describes the project as operating a "drop‑in service". The SURF evaluation found that this service had "very low or no uptake".
The McVerry Trust website claims that the service "provides treatment and rehabilitation support in the Kildare and West Wicklow areas".
However, the monitoring group evaluation report found that the service’s assertive outreach is "significantly curtailed", limited largely to Newbridge town and "failing to cover the wider county".
The McVerry Trust website also claims that it provides day programmes for stabilisation.
However, the report found that the stabilisation programme did "not run in 2025".
A stabilisation programme is a key part of drug treatment.
Mr Maher, who worked for the ARAS project until 2021, said it can help people to "reduce their use" to a point where they’re able to "function in society".
"Those programs, if they're run well, will have counsellors, they will have group work, they'll have drop-ins, they'll have the supports that are needed to help people to do that," he added.
The SURF evaluation also identifies what it calls an underutilisation of available staff. It notes that, on one day, 29 rostered hours corresponded with 50 minutes of recorded client contact, all of which was for non-therapeutic urinalysis.
The report questioned whether carrying out urine testing for external bodies, including the Court Service, was appropriate within a treatment setting, warning it could undermine trust and discourage engagement.
Cllr Pender and Mr Maher agree that Kildare, like other parts of Ireland, has a significant drugs problem.
"Like most places in this country now, cocaine is rampant. Weed and cocaine," Mr Maher said.
"It's nearly accepted in this country now that you [can] get cocaine nearly as easy as you can get a pint."
Cllr Pender said that since the pandemic he has seen a "massive rise" in crack cocaine use in the county.
Some individuals who found it difficult to access heroin during the pandemic "switched to crack and now they're shifting back, but they're not moving away from crack, they're using both. So, they're using both heroin and crack cocaine".
The Peter McVerry Trust (PMVT] declined a request for interview, but in a statement, said it "has expressed concerns regarding aspects of the [SURF] review process and its conclusions, which have been discussed with both SURF and the HSE".
It also said that it met with SURF and the HSE on Monday "where it was agreed that PMVT will continue to provide the low threshold ARAS service throughout 2026, funded by the HSE/SURF, while the future focus of the service is reviewed to ensure it reflects current and emerging community needs".
It added that it "recognises that the current location" of its premises in the industrial estate "presents accessibility challenges".
The HSE also declined a request for interview, but in a statement said, "a process of engagement and review is currently underway" with SURF, the Peter McVerry Trust, and the HSE, focussed on "assessing service delivery, and identifying any additional supports required for service users".
Cllr Pender says that, as the funder of the project, the HSE needs to act.
"This is at the feet of the HSE, to be very clear," he said, noting that HSE funding for the project was paid out for the first quarter of 2026.
"One quarter of €340,000 has already been paid out to a service that we know from that [SURF] report aren’t delivering what it's supposed to be delivering."