Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. We have had this debate on an ongoing basis. Professor Barry noted that we are very good at writing reports but that the implementation sometimes lacks commitment. I wonder about our treatment programmes for opiate addiction. I have often got the impression that while there is great goodwill in terms of the effort of the HSE and others at the coalface, deep down as a society we are saying to keep giving them the methadone and as long as they leave us alone on the street, we will keep moving on as a society. I do not believe we have confronted the real challenges that individuals face in their chaotic lives as drug addicts. The collective view of society seems to be that if they are not hassling us on the boardwalk or wherever, we are happy enough once we think they are getting their methadone.

Given that there are individual cases and individuals lives, we need to accept that we need individual pathways for recovery. We have to assess more deeply the individuals' problems rather than just having them queue up for a cup of sugary methadone every morning and letting them off. I know it will take huge resources. I know that methadone is cheap, but it does not really succeed in getting users to move from heroin abuse to involvement with the health services and into a recovery treatment programme. That pathway is fairly poor to say the very least.

It is poor for many reasons. Clearly, one of the main reasons is that it is not resourced. As a result, people fall back on methadone, fall out of the treatment programmes and go back on heroin.

I have no in-depth knowledge of the matter. I come from Cork. We do not have a major heroin problem in Cork, but I can sense little clusters of the problem developing in certain parts of the city. We know what happens if people in a community turn a blind eye to heroin. This was evident in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Dublin, where it quickly becomes an epidemic and caused major social problems.

I am highlighting all the problems while I look blankly when someone asks me for solutions. Many people have referenced the Lisbon approach. If we legalised or decriminalised drugs would we have more engagement? That may involve looking at it from a social and health point of view. The idea is that we would not have heroin addicts walking around, ducking the law and trying to avoid any form of contact with the State because of the threat of criminal convictions and everything that flows from that. If they engage and come out of a system with criminal convictions, that does not look great on anyone's curriculum vitae.

Have the witnesses examined other trials? Let us be honest. I presume that, collectively, society is experimenting all the time with how to deal with these issues. I have read a number of reports on Lisbon and how the city is dealing with the problem as well as other areas that have tried this approach. Is there any merit in examining it? Would we be simply wasting our time by examining what they have done? Should we instead work on the strategies in place at the moment?

Professor Barry said that with the upturn in the economy, there would be more resources and potential to do more. Previously, we had an economy that was rather upturned for a while, so to speak. Was there any correlation between a drop in heroin use or abuse and better outcomes for heroin addicts when we had endless resources and a lot of money to spend on everything and anything? Is it the case that we have to think smarter now about how we use our resources? My view is that it did not seem to reduce substantially. I recall walking the streets of Dublin at night during the Celtic tiger and seeing major heroin problems. Perhaps we were less inclined to notice them because we were so busy booking flights to Spain and elsewhere. I do not mean to be flippant but I believe we should examine it, because if we are turning into an economy that will have more resources in the coming years, we must not repeat the same mistakes or take the view that money will solve the problem without inherently addressing the underlying issues. That remains a concern.

The witnesses commented on how the pathways to drug addiction are fairly defined, including dysfunctionality in the family, unemployment, poor educational outcomes, lower socio-economic backgrounds and so on. I presume the quid pro quois that if we could address these problems, we would have fewer people taking the path to drug addiction. Even during the Celtic Tiger, when we experienced unemployment at 4%, which is full employment in a modern economy, we still had that problem. How can we address it?

I am asking questions rather than having any solutions in mind. One thing is for sure, and that is a review of the drug strategy will be completed next year. As with any strategy, we should review how successful it was and where it failed. There is no doubt that we still have a major problem in certain areas of 10,000 people who are consistently on methadone. I do not expect people to be critical of their employers but I am seeking an honest appraisal of whether we should look at other programmes in other parts of the world. Are we stuck with what we have? Is it a question of trying to make the best of it?