Mr. Joe Slattery:

It is back to the State's capacity. The end result of DRIVE is not to bring everyone to court for drug debt intimidation. When a family is at home terrified and not knowing where to go, do not know how to process the pros and cons of decisions that they need to make but they can approach DRIVE and speak to someone who does, and will help them problem solve what they want to do next.

Obviously there is an influence between the guards. In some areas it works really well and sometimes it is others. We had a situation recently where an inspector came in. The person the inspector spoke to felt very relieved after speaking to him, with no obligation to do anything. After that, the inspector sent another person from his team to speak about preventative measures a person can take to make one's home feel safe. For example, people can move things around such as video cameras and do different things to feel safe while this is going on. That was a really good intervention. The people will be given the choice and asked whether or not they want to go forward with this. It makes no difference to me. The whole point is DRIVE is there to help people whereas before they were lost. One part of our training is to identify potential instances such as if a person is working in a credit union and I withdraw €10,000 and do the same a month later. The same with GAA clubs and all that. Cocaine is massive big money and users get into debt really quickly. DRIVE helps people to respond to that. A number of people will probably come in front of the courts and say that they want to do that while others will never, ever do that for the same reasons mentioned by the Deputy so let us offer them support.

Another aspect and real pillar of our work is the NDTRS and to get statistics. There are no statistics in this country on the level of drug debt intimidation but that has now been created. Once that is there and the evidence is in front of the Government and Garda, they will now have to respond. That is where it is at the moment. It is building those foundations to get a true reflection so money can be put into the proper areas. We do need to know where it goes.