Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will pick up on a number of points that were made. It is true to say that there is a sense among many people working at community level that there is a sort of anti-community attitude on the part of the Minister of State's Department currently, but one that has been developing over recent years. The Minister of State talked about a timeframe and this being a 2017 strategy. Some of us have been involved much longer than that and it goes back to 1996 when the task force was first set up.

The key difference evident at that stage was that this was about listening to the experts on drug misuse. The experts are the ones who live with it on a day-to-day basis and who know the factors that contribute to people getting involved in the area of serious drug misuse and the blight that is on their lives, families and communities. It certainly was the case that task forces and community representatives were much more centrally involved.

I had the honour of chairing some of the oversight meetings in 2011 and 2012. I know from first-hand experience that those were the people who were dynamic in those meetings. They were bringing real, up-to-date, live information on the drug scene and talking about those contributory factors such as the whole-of-government stuff and the elements of serious disadvantage that were contributing to drug use. Those were the people who contributed most to those meetings.

We had different representatives from Departments who, in the main, were not touched by the problem of drug use. Those community people were absolutely essential. I have been a member of a drugs task force for a few decades and I was also a member of a second one for a certain period. Drugs task forces were highlighting the cocaine epidemic for many years, long before there was any recognition of that at official level, in the Minister of State's Department or in any other Department.

These were the people who were campaigning and saying we needed to respond and that this issue would get out of control and was destroying people's lives and communities. That was not listened to. Now, here the Minister of State is, in 2022, saying he is allocating €850,000 per year and we know one single task force is making a demand of €1 million. That is what it needs to respond to this issue. It is not a substantial allocation and I ask the Minister of State not to fool himself that it is so.

I read the press statement that went out with the announcement about that €850,000 going to the HSE and CHOs deciding how that would be spent. CHOs are grand in a whole lot of specialist areas in relation to health. In the main, they do not have expertise. HSE officials do not have great expertise at local level on the nature of the drug problem. The Minister of State is not even getting close to responding, on the level required, to the epidemic of cocaine.

I notice that the Taoiseach said in a debate in the Dáil last November, just a couple of months ago, that he wanted to see an expansion of supports for task forces. Where is that expansion of supports for task forces? They have been left on minimal budgets and even the additional €850,000 will not go directly to task forces. It is not on the scale that is required. We need to get real about the nature of the cocaine problem.

The Minister of State has used the term "whole-of-government response". We are not getting a whole-of-government response. In the early days, the drugs strategy was located within the Taoiseach's Department and the Taoiseach insisted on the relevant Departments responding at a senior level and in a meaningful way. That has stopped now. The response is not a meaningful one. I especially highlight education. The response is not meaningful at the national level, in terms of the oversight committee, and it is certainly not meaningful at local level, where many of the representatives of those Departments do not even bother attending anymore. Education, it has to be said, is by far the weakest link in all of this.

Can the Minister of State give us any sense that he will fight the case for additional substantial funding at local community level for task forces?

They are the people who know this problem best, know the many aspects that feed into it and have proposals for addressing them. Will the Minister of State give us any encouragement that he is taking this seriously, that he recognises the particular strengths the task forces bring, that he will do what the Taoiseach said regarding the provision of additional supports and that he will insist that other Departments play a meaningful role, especially at local level? As I said, education at local level is a key factor in one of the many aspects of this issue. The contributory factors are educational disadvantage and early school leaving, which is a key factor in respect of those who go on to engage in drug use. Will the Minister of State give us some grounds for hope on that? Will he fight the fight for those communities that are most blighted by drug use?