Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair. I thought the Chair would bring Deputy Ó Murchú in before me. I like skipping Deputy Ó Murchú, of all people.

This meeting has been fascinating. It has been so valuable for me to listen to this.

I was talking to the panel privately and I learn by listening. That is why at this meeting I usually stay for the whole lot of it. I usually try and box-off any other commitments I have so that I can be here. My learning style is to listen to interactions from the panellists and from other members of the committee, whether I agree with them or not, because sometimes it is good to hear the other side of conversations as well.

We have spoken about trauma-informed services. I get this 100%. There are various forms of trauma. I like "Em's theory". That makes sense to me. There is inherited trauma. I attended a meeting a while ago at which the intergenerational trauma of people who start to use substances in order to cope with the parental trauma that came down from the industrial schools, the Magdalen laundries and the mother and baby homes was discussed. I am from a disadvantaged community. There is the trauma of disadvantaged communities and the trauma of poverty. Other traumas have been mentioned. They do not know postcodes. It could happen to anybody. The thing about drink and drugs is that they give people the ability to escape the trauma. They work on a certain level until they do not work any more and the problems come in. They can calm anxiety. I remember somebody describing it to me with regard to poverty. He said that drink and drugs gave him an ability to have a holiday from being poor. Whether it was a brief hit or for a longer time, it does not really matter what drug was involved. Sometimes, the drug or drink of choice, whatever it might be, is the one that people can get their hands on.

People get to the stage of wanting to tackle their substance misuse whatever way they can. I understand how people might get to a stage where abstention is not for them. They might get to the stage where there are quite happy to have a couple of joints a week or a couple of pints at the end of the week. There are also people who go into detox. In my area, many people go into Cuan Dara in Cherry Orchard for detox. After they detox, they are drug-free but they are still left with all of the trauma, much of which has manifested and increased during years of substance abuse and addiction issues. What used to happen was that they would go to Keltoi in the Phoenix Park. Keltoi has been closed for the past three years. The services that I link with find this to be a big gap in services. Keltoi may not be down on paper as a dual diagnosis service but it is definitely a trauma-informed residential rehabilitation service. I have seen the work, recovery and progression of people after they have come out. They had time and space in an environment where they could deal with the trauma, whether it was from mother and baby homes, poverty or abuse. Whatever it might have been they had the space and time to be able to start to look at it. As someone else mentioned, they learned various coping mechanisms. The most recent answer I received in respect of Keltoi was most positive, namely, that it will reopen next year. I do not know when, but it will be open in 2024. Have the witnesses who work with front-line services seen the impact of not having a trauma-informed residential rehabilitation service available for people who use their services?