Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have a few comments and questions. I will be honest and say that I felt a great level of discomfort when we moved on to the policing presentation. I have worked in the addiction field and in the homeless sector for a long time. I find the words "policing this facility" distressful in that I would question why anybody would want to use a facility that is being policed in the first place. I could not even let the community garda anywhere near the front gates of a community project in which I was involved and if i did the young men would not come in and use the facility. We will fail from the very beginning if we see this as some sort of hub for dealers which will never be the case.

As someone who works in hostels with users with high needs, I can say that the staff of these facilities know what they are doing. People are removed from a hostel not by the police, but because the staff want to protect the most vulnerable within those services. I can guarantee that if there was any sale or supply in the injection rooms, it would be detected very quickly and the person concerned would not be allowed to use that facility. Then and only then could the Garda intervene if the staff telephoned to say they have a person dealing in the facility. That is not accounted for in head ten of the Bill under which the Garda can show up and come into the facility. The broad scope of that provision is extremely worrying.

If a member of staff telephones the Garda to seek assistance on an issue, that is different. As someone who has worked in these services for a long time, I believe we need to trust the people who work in them. Some of the narrative around this issue can be scary. Drug dealers have telephones now. They do not always hang around on a doorstep somewhere. It is much more organised and orchestrated. When we talk about people in stairwells with needles all around them, the question I would ask is why a child is studying in a stairwell. Bigger questions arise as to the reason those environments exist. They do not exist in a vacuum in terms of drug dealers.

I want to tease out further the question of the role the witnesses believe they play because the health model disappeared very quickly and the justice aspect is very heavy in terms of drug dealing and policing. Are we making any move towards a health-led approach to addiction because - this is a matter of concern to me - the injection rooms appear to be a justice-police led initiative? Head 10 overstates the power gardaí should have in accessing this facility, unless they are required to do so, much like in hostels. Injection rooms might as well be located within the hostels. We have had to set our place up to ensure people could inject safely. Regardless of whether that is against the law, it happens. We take someone out of their room, sit him or her between their two friends in a living room and tell them to watch that person to ensure that he or she does not overdose. That is already happening and we need to trust the staff that will operate the services in that if they need the assistance of the Garda, they will call them. There should only be intervention from the Garda when it is requested.