Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and his colleagues for coming before the committee. I am finding the conversation interesting. I was a member, in a previous incarnation, of a ministerial drugs task force and liaised with the community-based committees. I should say at the outset that I listened to the conversation there on the need for the legalisation of cannabis and I do not accept it at all. Cannabis is dangerous drug and is also a gateway drug. That has been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt. It is also hallucinatory. It is one of the drugs that is usually fed to kids deliberately to create a market for the people who supply that drug and more serious drugs.

As public representatives, we are all familiar with situations of severe drug or alcohol addiction or both combined. As Deputy Shortall said, the theme is we improve the situation so that people on methadone be encouraged to come off drugs altogether. I see Senator Ruane shaking her head but we all know a little bit about it. None of us is in absolute control of the one and only solution. If there was a solution, we would not have a drugs problem now, but we still have one.

I was involved in a previous incarnation in the Zürich and Amsterdam experiments and a number of other experiments, and I must say they are still experimenting. We still have a drugs problem worldwide. It is not going away. As with alcohol, the first question is whether the person concerned can accept they have a problem. Then it is whether they can work with the authorities - local voluntary or statutory, or both - to tackle the situation. That is first.

How many people in the country are using methadone now?