Ms Anna Quigley:

I will start with what was the dream one now that I look back on it, although we had loads of issues at the time. I am going back to the national drugs strategy team in the 1990s. In 1996, Mr. Fergus McCabe was invited onto the team, which was set up to oversee the implementation of the strategy that came out of what was called the Rabbitte report. It was a committee that had representatives from all of the organisations. Again, this was clearly the case because the report, which was the basis of it, had set out that broader kind of socioeconomic context, as has been recommended here by the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use. This meant all the various agencies and players needed to be part of this national drugs strategy team. The crucial thing around it, though, was that it was recognised it is not just about having a committee. Again, this is because everybody knows that if there is a committee meeting once every couple of months, people come together, talk about things and a few actions are agreed and then everybody goes away. We always say that is not interagency working. What was different about the national drugs strategy team was that each member of it, whatever Department or agency they were from, spent half their working week on the work of that committee. It was a huge core part of their day-to-day work. It was not a case of going to the committee, listening, saying a few things and then going back. I do not mean that in a disrespectful way to people, but committees are often like that. For those people on the national drugs strategy team, though, it was an actual core part of their work. Those people were responsible within their agency for dealing with the drugs issue. This meant that when they went back into their day jobs, they were dealing with the drugs issue and were able to relate it to overall action.

I can think of a really good example, and then I will shut up. We talked earlier about the community drug projects and this is where they originated. All that time ago, the methadone programme was being expanded, which was a positive thing. When people are actively using drugs, they are very busy all the time because they are constantly having to be out there doing things. One of the things that became really noticeable when people went on methadone was that they went to the clinic once a day and had the rest of the day free. People from the community and the community drug project were looking at this and started to say we needed to be providing stuff, something worthwhile, for people to be doing during the day. It was actually the representative of FÁS, now the Department of Social Protection, at the time who said to everyone sitting around the committee table together that it had its community employment, CE, scheme and wondered whether it could be looked at to adapt it in some way because it would give people 20 hours a week with some options. This was the root of what are now community drug projects. People do not realise that half the funding, or could be even more but it is certainly a significant amount, coming to community drug projects is from the Department of Social Protection. This is the case in some of them but not in all of them. This is hugely important, while there is funding from the HSE for the addiction-related pieces, the funding from the Department is saying we also want to look at the future of people and their future opportunities around education and employment. Thankfully, this model has survived. It is about having more of those things. It is a real interagency committee when everybody is sitting there and thinking of what their agency can contribute. This is not the thinking at the moment.