Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have to leave in about seven or eight minutes as I have a Topical Issue matter in the Dáil, but my colleague will step in until I return.

An Oireachtas committee is finally dealing with this issue, which is long overdue. I also want to put on the record the Trojan work done by Senator Ó Ríordáin when he was a Minister of State. Without his perseverance, we would not be dealing with this issue today.

While I welcome the fact we are finally discussing this issue, I have issues with some of the heads proposed by the Department. I stand to be corrected, but I understand that this is the only document we have on the heads of the Bill. It is the only one with which I have been provided. It contains 12 heads, some of which are two sentences long. It is not a very detailed proposal.

Even with the lack of detail, I have some issues with the document on which I hope the witnesses could comment. I refer to the effectiveness of any legislation that we will introduce to establish medically supervised injecting centre, even on a pilot project basis. The fact that we are considering a pilot project is all the more important because the roll-out of future injecting centres will rely on the success or failure of the pilot project. We need to get this right from the outset.

Head 1 refers to interpretations and definitions. It states that: "authorised users will be required to provide for those individuals who will be exempted from the offence of possession of a controlled drug on a premises licensed under this Bill and the supervised injection facilities", and I have an objection to that. I do not think we should have registration lists of authorised users.

In many cases drug users lead very chaotic lives. To have a system whereby people would be required to register in advance in order to access a facility defeats the whole purpose of the facility. It is supposed to be a harm reduction measure. We need to have as few obstacles as possible when drug users want to access services.

I feel very strongly about this. I have studied how other regimes operate. In other countries which have registered lists, they have been used to prevent people from obtaining driving licences and, in some cases, to discriminate against people who are described as active drug users. I also have issues around data protection. I could be a recovering addict who was addicted to heroin and have a relapse in the morning, but if I needed to register before I could go to a medically supervised injection centre that defeats the purpose from a harm reduction point of view.

Can Professor Bury comment on that, given that drug users lead very chaotic lives? In many cases, there are literacy issues. By Professor Bury's admission, many of those who are openly injecting on the streets have a background of homelessness. I do not how know how the first head of the Bill will work in practice. I also have issues around the application for a licence, but they are minor and we can overcome them as we make progress.

I have another major issue around head 10 of the Bill. It provides that a member of An Garda Síochána can enter a supervised injection facility without a warrant for the prevention or detection of offences. I have no issue with a garda being able to enter a facility if a crime is underway - if as a serious assault taking place within a unit a garda has to come in and enforce the law. However, it would defeat the purpose of having a safe place for people to go and inject if a person coming in the door behind them was a member of An Garda Síochána. I do not see the point in that. We are either moving towards a harm reduction model and away from the criminal justice system; there is no in between.

I do not think there is any need for a garda to have access to these facilities unless a crime is being committed on the premises. The head is very specific when it states that a garda can enter a supervised injecting facility without a warrant for the prevention or the detection of offences. If a garda is entering a premises to detect offences, that is completely counter-productive to what we are trying to propose. The head needs to be tightened up.

I have concerns that we are only considering a pilot project, but that is the current situation and we cannot do anything about it. However, if we are considering the introduction of a pilot project we need to get it right. I still believe that there is an element within An Garda Síochána - I will put this point to it later - and the Department that is not convinced of this project. On the one hand, they are saying we need to examine the models but, judging by the brief heads of the Bill we have, they will try to make it almost impossible for the project to succeed.

Head 9 provides that an offence of possession of a controlled drug would not apply to an authorised user, provided he or she is lawfully on the premises of an injecting facility during its normal opening hours and with the permission of the licence holder or his or her agents. Therefore, technically, under the law, if a person is 10 ft. away and on their way to one of these facilities, they are breaking the law if in possession of a controlled substance. For me, this goes to the very heart of the issue. We are trying to bring in medically supervised injecting centres in the absence of a debate on decriminalisation for personal use. I believe this will be a very difficult task. I know people will argue that they are two separate issues, and they can have that opinion. In my view, however, if the Bill is only saying it is lawful to be in possession of a controlled drug on these premises, it means that as soon as a person steps outside, or if he or she is on his or her way to one of these facilities, once he or she is stopped and searched by a garda, even if it is an authorised user as described in head 1, he or she would be breaking the law, even though he or she was going to a facility which could potentially save his or her life if he or she overdoses.

We cannot have it both ways. We cannot move to a model of harm reduction while still trying to have this criminal sanction element. It is either one or the other. That is why I feel so passionately about heads 1, 9 and 10 of the Bill. If we do not get this right, it will fail, and the only people who will suffer if it fails are the drug users themselves, not us, as politicians, or members of the Garda. Drug users in Cork will never even get the opportunity to have a medically supervised injecting centre if this one does not get off the ground and does not operate correctly.

I am sure the gardaí will say it is not their intention to be harassing anyone on their way to an injecting centre and that if they do stop and search people, common sense will be applied. That does not wash with me. The law is the law in the eyes of many people and common sense does not come into it. If common sense did come into it, we would have a policy of decriminalisation across the board for personal use, although that is just my opinion. If it was my decision, we would not even be looking at medically-supervised injecting centres and we would be moving to the model every other country is now moving to, namely, that of drug consumption rooms. We should not be confining it to medically-supervised injecting centres. We need to move to a model of drug consumption rooms. Even the briefing documents that we got from the Department of Health talk about drug consumption rooms.

I will finish for now. I am particularly interested in hearing the witnesses' comments on heads 1, 9 and 10.