Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I may not have been clear earlier with regard to decriminalisation. I am not saying that you do not enter into something unless you have a spectacular, utterly perfect framework. If we wait for that, we will never do anything. I accept that everything we have done to date has not dealt with this situation. Mr. Murray, among others, spoke about the need to introduce that framework in parallel with other things. That makes complete sense. I also accept that at times in here there is an element of people talking out of both sides of their mouths. When talking about something novel or whatever, there can be this idea of going easy on people and where derogatory terms and the rest will be used. The problem I generally have with that commentary is that nothing radical is being proposed from a policing point of view or whatever. There is no one in this building who could say what it would take to out-police the drug problem. It is not something that people would countenance in any way, shape or form. I am very glad we are having this conversation but there is a wider conversation to be had. It has to be real.

I welcome, as Dr. Quinlan said, the piece around the whole-system basis. That is applicable across the board. Mr. Murray talked about community education and bringing people along to be sure we introduce the necessary services and get buy-in. We have a normalisation of kids seeing things they could not see 20 years ago, other than possibly in parts of Dublin and wherever else. I see how things have changed even in Dundalk over recent years and what is acceptable and what we accept ourselves from time to time. We do need to be able to deal with that. As we go down this road, it will create anomalies and unintended consequences that have to be dealt with.

As a follow on from what Deputy Quinlivan was talking about, a considerable number of kids are using vapes. Every second child is using one, or probably more. Many of them are probably putting more than bubblegum flavoured nicotine in them, such as THC and whatever else. We are seeing a significant number of issues in regard to it. I imagine the witnesses are seeing those numbers spiking at the moment. That obviously creates a lot of difficult circumstances in trying to manage those kids away from that. We are dealing with huge issues such as psychosis. Where do we go with that?