Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late but this meeting clashed with another meeting next door. I do not have the gift of bilocation yet.

I have quickly read the presentation. I am, by profession, a community pharmacist and I originally come from the midlands. Twelve years ago I worked in both Athlone and Portlaoise at the height of the crisis. Beforehand I spent a short time studying in the UK and on my return to Ireland I was shocked at how drugs ravaged the communities and the extent of heroin use in the regional towns in the midlands. During the recession the problem spread to the smaller towns of Mullingar, Banagher in County Offaly and various places where the injection of drugs never happened before. It is fundamental that we view people as human beings and that it is not necessarily their poor choices that have led them to drug addiction. As Senator Ó Ríordáin has said, the aim of a facility is to save lives, limit harm, educate people, reach out to people and have services that engage with people. All of that means that when a bad batch of heroin reaches our streets that instead of finding out about it from the lad standing on the next corner that there is a facility that acts as a safe place where helpful information can be shared.

I fully support the use of injection centres. Anybody who opposes them is exercising a severe form of NIMBYism. It is important to point out that people have died on stairwells and in public toilets but middle class people have died in sitting rooms. We must open people's eyes to the fact that drug addiction transcends the class system.

When I worked in the UK huge needle exchange programmes were rolled out in community pharmacies with great success. At the time there was huge resistance to the approach. The idea of people and drug dealers congregating around injection centres is an issue for the Garda and we must be vigilant about the problem.

It annoys me when people claim addicts receive methadone treatment forever. Methadone is quite cheap as medications go and its administration can be well managed in the community. I have often had patients receive 10 ml maintenance dose of methadone yet live functioning lives. Somebody who becomes addicted to heroin in their late teens should not carry a criminal conviction for the rest of his or her life if he or she manages to sort out their lives. I believe we should give people a second, third and fourth chance or whatever is necessary. I fully support the work of the delegation. I shall work with my party to expedite this initiative to the best of my ability.