Dr Deirdre Mongan is a research officer in the Health Research Board, with responsibility for the Irish national drug and alcohol strategies. In this role, she undertakes research on drug prevalence and patterns of drug use in Ireland and has managed the National Drug and Alcohol Survey and the Irish section of the European Web Survey on Drugs. She also undertakes secondary data analysis and has recently analysed the Growing up in Ireland 1998 Child Cohort dataset to measure the extent of substance use among young people in Ireland and to explore the factors associated with substance use.