‘Effectively taking poison’
The selling of deadly illicit alcohol to Cork’s homeless community is an exploitation of some of the city’s most vulnerable people.
That’s according to the Lord Mayor of Cork and Blackpool-based GP John Sheehan who said that the extremely dangerous liqueur poses massive health risks to drinkers and that anyone who consumes it is “effectively taking poison”.
“It’s very disturbing when you think that the most vulnerable people are being preyed upon, people who are homeless and who have a lot of addiction issues,” he told the Cork Independent.
He continued: “The problem is that the people who are going to be buying this are people who have alcohol problems already and are very vulnerable, and that’s what makes this a particularly dangerous situation.”
His comments came after a multi-agency search was conducted at an apartment on the northside of Cork city yesterday morning during which gardaí seized a quantity of homemade alcohol, hundreds of bottles for packaging, a quantity of cash, and a baton.
A suspect was believed to be selling illicit alcohol to people sleeping rough in Cork city, leading to the garda investigation.
Gardaí stated that the price of the alcohol being sold varied between €10 and €13 per bottle and that up to 140 litres of the alcohol were being sold per week.
Cllr Sheehan, who is a GP by profession, said that the nature of illegal alcohol and its production meant that consumers have no way of knowing how strong it is and what it contains.
He said: “The dangers of illicitly produced alcohol are huge. People don’t know its concentration and they don’t know what other substances might be going into it.
“In the process of making it, there’s often other by-products that don’t get filtered out, so there’s a significant risk of blindness and heath disease with it,” he added.
“The risk of overdose and respiratory depression and vomiting while unconscious is very, very high, much higher than with ordinary alcohol.”
Cork Simon Campaign and Communications Manager, Paul Sheehan, told the Cork Independent that although he had heard of isolated instances of illicit alcohol production in the past, he was not aware of the scale of the recently uncovered operation.
He was also unaware that the alcohol was being sold on the streets.
He said: “This would be very rare. There have been cases in the past where you might hear of it happening, but there would be no hard or tangible evidence of it. Obviously this is hard evidence.”
The multi-agency operation consisted of garda members from Anti-Social Behaviour Unit & Detective Branch, Revenue, Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) and the Heath Service Executive (HSE).
FSAI and HSE will investigate with a view to a prosecution from a public health concern.
No arrests were made as of going to print yesterday and the investigation is ongoing.
The story came to light yesterday morning on ‘The Neil Prendeville Show’ on RedFM.