Ms Serena Bryans:

I thank the Deputy for that question. I welcome the opportunity to address some of the issues he raised. On whether we are facing a tsunami, we are already in one. We certainly have seen that in the Rutland Centre with the number of phone calls from desperate people, who are desperate to get a place where they can address their addiction. We are a 16-bed facility, so we are constantly in a state where we have a waiting list. As part of my work there, I worked in assessments, part of which often involved ringing other services to see if there were any places or any way to help. It is the same with those services ringing us. We just do not have the facilities, beds, supports and infrastructure in place to deal with the tsunami that is already here. There is a larger one coming and I am sure all my colleagues here will agree with that.

To come to some of the Deputy's other points, and it is something very close to my heart, my colleagues and I are all reacting to people who are looking to address addiction. We are in a very reactive space much of the time. When people come to us, we deal with them however our supports allow us to and then we send them back out into the community. It is what happens to them then that is also falling down. I ask the committee to also take a broader view that is not just about what we can do within the services, and the reactive response to addiction, but looks at it in a broader way.

The Deputy spoke about stigma, which is very real. If people say they are "in recovery", and my colleague Dr. McMonagle used that term to refer to recovery from brain injury, that is perceived very differently than a person saying he or she is in recovery from addiction. For example, if people say during a job interview that they are in recovery from a brain injury, they will get a very different response, I would imagine, than if they said they were in recovery from addiction. Part of that is due to a lack of education because people do not understand what being in recovery from addiction means. I ask the committee to consider the broader aspects of that. Again, education is part of it. It is really about building recovery capital at a personal, community and wider country level, so that people who have addressed their addiction and are moving into recovery have the recovery capital to allow them to continue on that journey. Education at school level is a very basic start for that so people can understand, be educated and, therefore, addiction recovery can be destigmatised.

Visibility is also important. It was National Recovery Month in September and we need a lot of visibility for such initiatives. My colleagues said earlier that young people are seeing what drugs do and they are seeing the perceived good stuff that comes from them such as the fancy shoes, clothes and jewellery. Recovery and what it looks like does not have the same visibility. If there is an enticement to go into drug dealing or criminal behaviour then recovery does not have the same enticement. We need investment to see that change.