Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Dr. Bedford. His CV is very impressive and he brings a lot of expertise to this. Unfortunately, a lot of the work he does is probably of a tragic nature because, no more than the Road Safety Authority, he is delving into the cause of accidents, their aftermath etc.

I would like to take up a number of points, following Deputy Carey's questions. I refer to drug-driving. For decades, we have all been familiar with drink-driving. Younger generations have come to grips with that and there are designated drivers who have soft drinks or zero alcohol beer on a night out. In terms of drug taking, a term was bandied about years ago, namely "functional alcoholics", that is, people have a few glasses of wine every night of the year and can still, whether doctors say they can, get up the following morning, get to work and do a day's work. We are now hearing there are also functional drug takers who can go into a bar at night, snort cocaine and then claim they are able to go into a job the following day, some of which are high-powered, high-paid jobs, and function in that regard. Does that concern Dr. Bedford? It is something he is seeing more of? He has given us some statistics, but functional alcoholics will, no matter what the law tells them, get into their cars with the keys and drive. Is he seeing an increase in terms of functional drug taking and people carrying on as normal the following day?