Nicole Ryan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am going to pick up on a few points. Filling out forms is not the issue, to be honest. Everybody who works in this space and anybody who works with communities knows how to fill out a form. Let us call a spade a spade: it is a matter of the funding. The money spent on addressing drugs is the issue, not filling out applications.

I am delighted with the remark about the Department of education. I am biased but I believe it has been getting off scot-free for decades without taking any responsibility for prevention among younger people. The young are the next generation. They are wise to everything and know more than we think, but they are naïve at the same time. I cannot wait to have the Department of education officials in here.

The witnesses might know the answer to this question. It a general one on rural Ireland. My area is rural and there is still a traditional attitude, so people do not talk about drugs and they say drug-taking does not happen in their families. We brush it under the rug. There are no services in my area; you have to go to the city. Travel is an issue. People with disabilities or people who do not have access to transport are just left to rot away in addiction a lot of the time. Have the witnesses seen an increase in the number of people in rural areas looking for help? What is the solution? If community services are not really available in rural areas and are concentrated in the cities, are people just falling through the cracks even more? They are almost hard to reach at this point. This is huge.