John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am not trying to grandstand the Minister of State, but I do want to send a very strong message to him from the point of view of the preparation of next year's budget. In ten years, the funding to Tallaght drug and alcohol task force from the Department of Health and the HSE decreased. I welcome the recent allocation, but it is only a start. That is the message I have to get across to the Minister of State.

In terms of the funding of the 14 drug task forces, the Tallaght drug and alcohol task force ranks eighth. That is not acceptable. I make that point to the Minister of State's officials. They need to look hard at this. I have nothing against any other areas, but this figure has really stood out to me over the past year. In terms of funding of drug and alcohol task forces by the Department of Health, in 2020 Bray received approximately €575,000 and Tallaght received €336,000.

Anybody who has the barest knowledge of the impact of drugs on communities would find that figure startling. In 2020, Bray received almost €1 million from the HSE and Tallaght received just over €900,000. These figures have to be interrogated over the next year. They really do. The Minister of State does not have to respond to this now, but we will have to keep coming back to this theme. I applaud the previous Government for the effort and resources that went into tackling drugs and the crime-related issues in Dublin's north inner city. We can only look on in envy at that. Does the Minister of State understand that the scale of the problem is no less in the community that I represent and that the Chair also represents? The resources devoted to it are significantly less. Only politics can answer that. I am aware that the scale of effort and background research that went into trying to tackle the issue with Dublin's north inner city was driven from the Department of the Taoiseach. A number of key people, such sportspeople and other well-known people, were drafted in over a period of time to assist in the challenge that Dublin’s north inner city faces in relation to drugs. Again, we can only look on in envy from the Tallaght perspective.

I would like to look at the whole policing piece. One of the key findings of the report from the Tallaght Drug and Alcohol Task Force was just how normalised issues like the selling of drugs have become as part of the whole normalisation of drugs. Policing is not part of criminalising this, but it is certainly part of addressing it. Policing comes in when the wholesale, open, visible sale of drugs outside schools or shops is taking place. In the Dublin south metropolitan division, the number of An Garda Síochána personnel per 1,000 people falls well short of other policing divisions in Dublin, never mind other counties in the country. I ask the Minister of State to take this on board. In some cases, the Garda provision in the area is less than half of the Garda provision in some other policing divisions. I have a plea to the Minister of State at the Department of Health today. What is stopping him and other Ministers allied to the Department from adopting an approach that suits an area like Tallaght, similar to the approach that has been taken in Dublin's north inner city? What is stopping him from doing that?