Belfast public needle bin 'not a silver bullet'

A proposed trial to install a waste needle bin in Belfast city centre is not a "silver bullet" but one step to dealing with drugs issues in the city, a councillor has said.

Brian Smyth was speaking ahead of a Belfast City Council vote on Thursday on whether or not to install the bin in the council-owned car park on Little Donegall Street.

Councillors chose the car park over a site on Corporation Square at the People and Communities Committee last month.

Green Party representative Smyth said the council was lifting between 600 and 700 needles a month in the city centre, with other organisations also involved in the collection of needles.

A council report stated there had been an increase in needle finds in recent months and it had been "highlighted as being in the top six locations" for discarded needles.

The proposed metal needle bin will be concreted to the ground and will provide a secure way of disposing of sharps.

Smyth had previously tabled motions for similar bins to be placed in Writer's Square, however this is not council land.

He said the Department for Communities (DfC) had turned down this call.

"They are worried about image but I would say if needles continue to be found in the area of high significance, then that's going to provide an image problem," he said.

A DfC spokesperson said it recognised that drug abuse and associated anti-social behaviour in the city centre was a major issue and was working closely with other organisations, including the council, to tackle the problems.

Smyth said members of the council's cleansing team had found needles disposed in regular rubbish bins.

"This poses a risk not only to them but also to members of the public," he said.

"Whilst this is a very small response, I think we need to get our heads around the bigger issue of rising drug use in and around Belfast city centre and how we tackle it."

In March 2023, Belfast City councillors passed a motion in favour of setting up a safe injecting facility to help prevent overdoses among drug users.

The council has no legal power to open a facility and a change in legislation would be required for this to happen.

The aim would be to reduce overdoses and drug-related harm as well as making drug use less visible to the community.

Smyth said such a facility could make the area safe for "people who live, work and socialise in the city centre".

Damian McNairney, a volunteer and trustee from The People's Kitchen in Belfast, said the bin would help but described Belfast city centre as being in a drug crisis.

The kitchen offers support to vulnerable and homeless people.

"We need to be more adventurous, we need to be more compassionate in our approach to the issue," said Mr McNairney.

"Addicts are being demonised, we need to look and see if we can help.

"If we solve the problem at source, i.e. the addiction, then we are going to be able to deal with the drug paraphernalia and the other issues allied to that."

Mr McNairney said there were other areas with "more prominent use" but getting needles off the street was always a positive.

"There are needles around the town anyway. By not putting the bins up they're not going to go away," he said.

Mr McNairney said he had visited a safe injection site which opened in Dublin in 2024 and he was in favour of a similar facility in Belfast.

"It seems to be very encouraging in terms of people using it, there's drug paraphernalia that has been taken off the streets, it's being safely disposed of and people with addictions are being signposted to other services," he said.

In March, Justice Minister Naomi Long told BBC News NI that the "war on drugs had not been won" and there needed to be a rethink of how illegal drugs were dealt with in Northern Ireland.