The mother of Dara Quigley has told the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use that her death affected her sister “really badly” and that she developed a severe dependency on heroin.
Aileen Malone told the assembly on Saturday that she had lived with people with drug dependencies for about 20 years and that it affected the family unit “on so many levels” and was “exhausting”.
Ms Malone’s daughter, Dara (36), died by drowning on April 12th, 2017. An open verdict was returned in October 2021 by coroner Joe Kelly, who had heard evidence that, four days before her death, footage of Ms Quigley walking naked and in a distressed state in Dublin had been captured by Garda CCTV.
The images were subsequently shared by a member of An Garda Síochána and uploaded to social media.
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Ms Malone said Dara started out using drugs recreationally in her early 20s, when she had a good job in IT, a steady boyfriend and “a nice life”.
She said her daughter went to raves and, in order to be able to come down on a Sunday night and function at work the following week, she smoked heroin.
“There was a whole gang of them did it and she was the only one that developed problems with it,” Ms Malone said.
“Then, very sadly, she quickly spiralled into dependency and died then a few years later, it would have been about 12 years after we first became aware of her problem.”
Ms Malone said Dara’s death had affected her younger sister “Amy” – , which, she said, was not her real name –, who developed a severe dependency on heroin and ‘benzos’ (benzodiazepines).
She said “Amy” had a pre-existing mental illness and was now on a methadone treatment programme. Ms Malone also spoke about the difficulty in accessing services and said that “Amy” was “11 months asking” for methadone treatment and that five clinics “refused her time and time again” because of her dual diagnosis.
“I ended up paying for her methadone, buying her methadone off the street so that she could access methadone. That is ridiculous,” she said.
Ms Malone said living with people with drug dependencies affected the family “emotionally, physically, financially and socially” and that “it took so much out of us”.
She said she and her husband Terry were focusing so much of their energies on their two daughters, that two other family members “were kind of neglected”.
“We didn’t have as much time for them,” she said. “That’s tragic because they needed us as much as Dara and “Amy” did.”
She said friendships fell away because they became “obsessed” with their two daughters – “that’s all we could think about, all we could talk about, they became our whole life”.
Ms Malone also said she and her husband had paid off drugs debts for their daughters but that they weren’t “huge amounts”, probably about €500.
She said the “most painful thing” was seeing their daughters having been beaten up “a couple of times” because of drug debts.
“It is so painful to see your daughter with bruises or black eyes or very gingerly moving around,” she said. “It kills you because you know something awful has happened and that they have been badly threatened but you ask and they kind of shrug it off.”
The Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use is holding its second meeting this weekend in Dublin Castle, where chairman Paul Reid and 99 randomly selected members are hearing about the lived experience of drug use and its impact on individuals, families, front-line workers and communities.
Members will visit Coolmine and Merchants Quay Ireland treatment centres on Sunday, where they will have the opportunity to witness services first-hand and speak with staff and people who use the facilities.
Gillian O’Donnell told the assembly that she was “born addicted to heroin” in the late 1970s as a result of her parents’ use.
“I was in hospital for the first three months of my life, then I went back home with my parents, who were in the inner city during the middle of a heroin epidemic,” she said.
“Young kids got involved with running drugs from one part of the flats to another part of the flats so we became very accustomed very early in life. It was part of the infrastructure I suppose.”
Ms O’Donnell said she began using heroin at a young age and that it was “like a perfect storm”.
“It was my environment. It was the area I lived in. I lived in a poor community area, both my parents were people that had used drugs,” she said.
“It was part of the norm where I lived so it wasn’t something that was back then a big thing. Nowadays, obviously, it would be horrendous, but back then it was kind of part and parcel of the environment.”
Ms O’Donnell said her father had died of a heroin overdose and that it was one of the first deaths of the heroin epidemic.
She also said she was convicted for “something minor” and was jailed for four months and lost her home and her children as a result.
Ms O’Donnell, who is now in recovery, has trained in addiction recovery and is hoping to work as a support worker for those affected by drugs. She said even now she faces “blocks” because of her criminal record.
