Ms Anna Quigley:

The story of community involvement around the drugs strategy began as campaigning, going back to the 1980s and 1990s. It was a case of the State not responding to the drug issue. There was an emerging heroine issue at the time. That problem was developing in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the country. It was not getting the kind of political response it needed. Communities got organised to campaign and call attention to the issue. They were not listened to for a long time. That was acknowledged by the Government in 1996, that it had not listened. This is something everyone knows. People who are active and engaged in our communities on the ground are aware, they see what is going on in their areas. They are the people, the community leaders, who saw the drugs issue emerging in their areas, in north Dublin inner city in the early days when heroine started to emerge. People had no idea what was going on. It was new. Like the story Mr. Hamilton related about crack cocaine, at one stage heroine was new and nobody in these communities knew what was going on. They knew something was going on, that this drug was available. They knew young people were using it and getting sick and it was having a huge impact on them. Because they are engaged on the ground, they have that knowledge.

It is important to say that is expertise. This is something we always say, as community representatives, because there is a tendency to believe that the experts are the people who know about particular types of treatment or the signs, and of course those are needed, they are crucial, but the expertise is there and we need to base our policies on reality. That is the key point here. What community brings to the table is reality. What Mr. Hamilton described here is reality, the reality in Tallaght. The reality will be different in communities throughout the country.

Recently we did a survey on the development of the drug problem in rural areas and we saw the same thing. It was community leaders, people who were engaged in their community were the people coming forward with the information. Another reason that is crucial is, from the beginning in our work we have seen communities, people who use drugs, and families together, unified. Sometimes in communities there is a huge stigma attached to drug use, particularly the most difficult experience such as crack cocaine. It is crucial we have people in our communities speaking out for a positive response in support of people who are using drugs and their families because it is easy for the problem here to be perceived as being the people who are using the drugs. It is easy for them to be seen as the root of the problem. That is why leadership and voices from within the community strongly saying "No", the people who are using the drugs and their families are all part of the one community and we want to work together.

One of the things Ms Hill spoke of - and it is a crucial part of what the community drug projects do - is the successes. I have been to many events in local communities. The local projects organise public events that are open to all of the community. Everybody comes in, from the schools, the clubs, the churches, together with the people who have been involved in those projects. That role is essential in our communities because there is too much potential for division, particularly now that there is so much intimidation and fear out there. It can be extremely difficult for people who use drugs and for their families. They are caught up in all that. For them to be able to come and speak out is incredibly difficult so we need our community representatives. We have always supported the view that people who use drugs and their families should have their own strong voice. We absolutely need that community representation.

On the point of funding, when that community expertise is not recognised and respected, and at the moment there is no sign that it is respected, then that shows in how funding decisions are made. We do not understand why, people will know that from 2008 to 2013, the years of the crux, the budgets to the task forces and to their projects were cut by a total of 34% which is far above the national average level of cuts to services. Since those cuts stopped in 2013, that is eight years ago, there has been no restoration of those budgets. The task forces are operating on budgets that were significantly reduced during the recession, and in all the years since, with all the new problems and challenges that have emerged, as Mr. Hamilton described, there has been no increase in the budgets. Additional money has been allocated to the national drugs strategy for the past five or six years, and it will be sought again this year, some €6 million, none of which comes to the projects on the ground. We do not understand why that is, especially as the projects are such good value for money.

Originally in the drugs strategy whatever actions each Government agency and Department were responsible for were funded from within their budgets, and the specific drug initiative budget for the task forces was separate and it went directly to the task forces. Now it goes to the HSE and the HSE decides what should be done with it. It needs to come back as a ring-fenced budget for the use of the task forces to fund the local drug projects, and not be absorbed into the HSE budget. That is crucial.