Ms Grace Hill:

I will start on that and it would be great if Mr. Hamilton came in from a front-line service point of view. On Covid, one positive that came out of that was the confirmation of how essential front-line community drug services are to people at the coalface who needed support and a contact point at that time. There were many challenges. We did a survey of the impact of Covid on front-line services. Mr. Hamilton will attest that the big thing was the amount of resources of people at the door, in terms of cleaning and that type of thing. It was about dealing with and supporting people through that lack of connection when it was not safe to meet up.

The Deputy asked about the citizens' assembly. For me, it would be about focusing on the future. The chairs' network of the local drug task forces are looking to come together next year and develop a campaign in line with the 25th anniversary of drug task forces. I would love if that would look back, though I am not into looking back too much, at the positives and at what has been achieved. Some people forget what task forces do on the ground daily through community drug services. That is important. What have we learned? Fintan O'Toole article asked on Saturday what we have learned and how we can put it into practice. We have done so much already. I would love if the citizens' assembly could address that and look at other countries' ways of working. We have done that well in terms of decriminalisation and harm reduction strategies. If we could do that a bit more, that would be fantastic.