Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

There were some great conversations. Thinking of that informal setting, if you back to Ancient Greece, that is how philosophers developed all their big ideas, standing on the street talking and people gathering around and listening. They are not new ideas but there was a professionalisation and they "middle-class-ified" our communities by seeing it as an opportunity to work or for a career. There was all this local knowledge and working class people who worked hard to find buildings to open services and it was just pushed out. Hard-to-reach people are just the most let down in terms of the workers because we do not evaluate our own skillset with everything having to be in a physical building, as Deputy Crowe said earlier. Years ago, everyone went out onto the streets. When I developed the drug services in Bluebell, I think I was one year on the street before I even opened the door of the centre because there was never a drug service there before. That is what works. For some people, other services or higher levels up in management services want to create the idea that that is unsafe. I do not feel unsafe in my community when I hang around the shops or when chatting to someone in a park - someone else tells me I should feel unsafe. The constraint on the work does not come from the workers or the young people; it comes from somewhere else. We need to resist it massively.

Mr. McCann mentioned cultural appropriateness. There were discussions when we developed the interim report around what that looks like at policy and government levels but also at service provision level. When I worked in drugs services 20 years ago, there were one or two Travellers I had to secretly work with. They would not come into a group. It was the same when I was in the homeless sector. I think there were two homeless women with alcohol addiction. That was 20 years ago. The landscape has changed but the services have not moved adequately.

When looking at cultural appropriateness, what does that mean? Will Mr. McCann and Mr. Collins comment? Does it mean making mainstream services culturally appropriate? Is it making sure what is delivered and offered in the programme is culturally appropriate? Does it mean the staff are diverse enough that the staff is culturally appropriate? At what layers does "culturally appropriate" apply? What does it look like?