Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 3 October 2024
Committee on Drugs Use
A Health-Led Approach: Discussion (Resumed)
9:30 am
Dr. Sharon Lambert:
I referred earlier to the inter-agency case management. When people come into an addiction service, it is rarely the drugs that are the problem. It is things such as housing and mental health. Deputy Wynne talked about how we define trauma. One of the issues is that poverty is a trauma. Homelessness is a trauma. We have not spoken here today about the impact of discrimination on the Traveller community. All of those things are traumas but we do not necessarily think of them like that when we are talking about it. There is a problem with how we define trauma. If somebody comes in to you and they are experiencing challenges and difficulties as a result of their addiction, you cannot just look at that. You have to look at their access to mental health, housing, education and employment. I will go back to the fundamental point about structural inequality, however. I would much prefer that we tackle structural inequality so that we are not sitting around having inter-agency case management meetings. A lot of what we are talking about is a response to a chronic problem but if we did not have people in poverty or locked out of education, employment and housing, we would not need to address all of those problems and we would save a whole lot of money.
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