Seán Kenny (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the point made by a number of the delegates in relation to the need for appointment of a Minister of State with responsibility for the drugs strategy. Previously, this was the responsibility of the current Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Alex White, and prior to that Deputy Rabbitte, was the first Minister of State with responsibility in this area. There have been a number of appointments since then of Ministers of State with particular responsibility for this area. The message from the delegates is, I think, that this position needs to be reinstated.

I was interested in the point made by the speaker from the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development on providing a safe environment where people can come forward and give their views. She mentioned that a Garda presence is required, with boots on the ground, in order to make people feel safe, so they come forward and give information that will lead to some kind of resolution of these problems. One hopes that when these new extra gardaí are trained and become available, that will release more gardaí who can go back to doing the kind of work that was previously done in that area.

I asked a question earlier about cases in which people have to leave their homes.