Ms Anna Quigley:

It is just another example of the importance of the community drug project level and the reluctance of agencies to work together on a whole range of issues like this. At the level of the community drug projects, people just go and do it anyway. I am thinking about the SAOL Project in particular. It is a programme for women in addiction but it has a specific programme around domestic violence because that has emerged as an issue. The project is piloting that on the ground. It is a really good example of the role of community-based projects. It takes the policy people and the people in the agencies a long time to realise they need to work together, if they ever do, but we are lucky to have that model of community drug projects at service delivery level that do not just deal with addiction but deal with whatever issues are going on in someone's life. That model is really crucial because it allows for that kind of interagency stuff which, as Ms Bairéad has said, is very difficult to get. I suggest it would be worth having the SAOL Project here so that the committee could hear more. It again proves that it is in that community-based model that you will get interagency co-operation happening in practice.