Dr. Johnny Connolly:

This is an initiative that was introduced, and the Garda will be in a position to update the members on it. One of the objectives of this system was to alleviate the resource pressure on the Forensic Science Laboratory, so that if somebody admits to cocaine or cannabis possession for personal use there might be a prosecution but they would not be prosecuted for supply. There would be a presumptive testing regime rather than having to go to the Forensic Science Laboratory, which is usually resource intensive. It is quite a pragmatic way of dealing with the problem, which at least alleviates some of the resource pressures, particularly in view of the fact, for example, that 80% of drug prosecutions are for what is called simple possession - section 3 possession of cannabis for personal use. That is not where all the resources go, but a prosecution has to go through a trial and so on.

In many countries measures have been introduced, particularly at the level of possession, to find different ways of diverting people, and there have been a number of different experiments throughout the world in which they have focused on that particular dimension. One of the initiatives here was the presumptive testing initiative. Many of the gardaí I spoke to in the study I did felt that they would like some discretionary power to be able to deal with certain cases of possession, not necessarily specifying what that was - perhaps a different approach that could be adopted for certain types of offence where they believed a warning might have been more appropriate.

They did not state what it would be, but that they would like to be able to adopt a different approach to certain types of offence where they believed a warning might be more appropriate. That is the type of initiative involved.