Ms Aoife Bairéad:

Given that most of our funding comes through the Department of Health, it should be that organisation. We must also remember that the task forces are set up to have statutory, voluntary and community agencies working together. That framework is in place. Departments need to prioritise us and send that message down through the various organisations they fund and represent. We may have a HSE member or somebody from Dublin City Council but we may not have somebody from, for example, mental health. Given the emphasis on dual diagnosis, the local mental health care team or local primary care centre ought to be represented. We may not have a representative of education or Tusla. That is a top-down message. It has to be an expectation that organisations engage with these services. Drug and alcohol use affect every Government service that I can think of in one way or another. The idea that there is not that top-down expectation surprises me. I have been in the job for more than a year now. I worked in communities for 20 years. It surprises me that the top-down message is not there, given that task forces are set up to allow for that and with the expectation of that. Given where the funding comes from, what we already know and what was emphasised by the citizens' assembly, it should be led by the Department of Health, but the other Departments should see themselves as critical players and make sure that happens.

The Deputy is right in what he has said about treatment. We need those treatment facilities. Many people need residential treatment. We know that particularly for communities where people have had struggles and difficulties, trauma being the most obvious one but other issues as well, their chances of remaining in recovery are less than those who have lived an easier life. That means that those community counselling and therapeutic options must remain. The Deputy said rightly that addiction does not have to affect people for the rest of their lives. However, some people may need support for the rest of their lives for that to be the case. The way funding is given now means that we do not have the resources we would need to ensure that free and readily available counselling is available to everybody who needs it. Funding is often given year on year. This is my voluntary role but my job is as a social worker and I do therapeutic work. There is an ethical issue with offering people therapy that might have to stop in six months and will not be there for those people. That is against any ethical framework I can think of but task forces are forced to do that every year. They must scrimp and save to pull in whatever funding is given, with €20,000 here and €10,000 there. They are told they will have the funding next year but may never have it again. It is unsustainable, unhelpful and unfair. We must have that availability. I agree with the regional task force that what different communities in different parts of the country face is different. Those communities need their own individual responses and task forces are the best people to do that.