Rise in teen addiction problems

An increase in demand for teenage drug and alcohol addiction services has been seen by the country's main residential treatment centre.

The Aislinn centre provides the State's only drug-free residential treatment programme for young people aged between 15 and 21 who are dependent on alcohol or drugs.

Last year it raised the number of bed nights it provided from 3,650 in 2008 to 4,380 in 2009 in order to cope with the increase in demand, the centre's director Declan Jones said at the launch of its annual report.

"The addiction problem is increasing constantly, yet the state has never assessed the scale of the issue nor put in place a unified approach to arrest its growth" Mr Jones said.

The centre is concerned that the rate of teenage addiction has not been quantified and is only based on anecdotal figures.

"Without national figures we simply cannot put the adequate resources in place to solve this problem," Mr Jones said.

"In order to tackle this problem we need to have a comprehensive understanding of how big the problem is in order to establish what funds are required to solve it.” he said.

Aislinn provided treatment for 135 adolescents in 2008 and has treated 1141 young people since it opened over ten years ago.