Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. I understand that the witnesses are restricted in what they can say because the Department has to implement Government policy, the Garda has to implement law and personal opinions do not come into it. I understand that terminology is important and the idea of this centre being policed is not what we want to emerge from these proceedings, but streets and areas are policed. I visited a centre in Rotterdam and the injecting room there was one small component of the overall centre. There were a range of activities in the centre ranging from counselling to interactions. If what we achieve here is an injecting centre, just a room where people inject, then it will fail. It must be part of a much wider suite of services for people.

A common question that will be asked is how one interacts with an individual whom gardaí in the area know has an illegal substance on their person as they proceed to the centre. I would say, and many people would agree with me, that this person is making a leap of trust in engaging with these services and he or she probably has many reasons from personal experience not to trust the services. A comparison could be made between this centre and the average methadone clinic or health centre that people attend, and Mr. O'Driscoll mentioned the North Strand. The average garda on the beat knows there is a higher chance of a person attending such a clinic having something illegal on their person. I ask the Garda representatives about discretion and how that is policed. The situation will be same when it comes to an injecting centre. The Garda representatives, who are knowledgeable about the law, know the difference between a person who is pushing drugs and a person who is the victim. If a person is interacting with this centre in a positive proper way, is it not similar to a person who has a chronic addiction but is going to a methadone clinic to get their methadone? Does An Garda Síochána not deal with that situation in a particular way? What we will be doing here is replicating that.