Ann Graves (Dublin Fingal East, Sinn Fein)

I thank the witnesses for their contributions. I found it useful to have evidence-based presentations, particularly for someone like me who comes to this with fresh eyes. If it works for the witnesses, I will go briefly through each of their presentations and ask them one question each to focus things.

I will start with Dr. Lambert. Her work has clearly put intergenerational trauma on the map for policymakers, particularly the piece on Cork Simon, which highlights the link between adverse childhood experience, homelessness and substance abuse. It is interesting to note that the figures do not match with the general figures. I have spent the past ten months meeting and visiting with community-based addiction services. The biggest eye opener for me was the level of trauma people are enduring. It also appears the issue is not that people are addicted to a particular substance but that the actual childhood trauma they went through is the biggest problem. Does Dr. Lambert agree that to tackle the causes and long-term intergenerational trauma will take complete structural system changes, which will only come about when the Government makes this a political priority, which it does not currently do, and that is taking into consideration the factors she has already outlined in the context of education?

The words of the women Ms O'Reilly referred to really hit home. I recently met a group of women who spoke to me about survival sex. That was basically having sex with someone to have somewhere to sleep at night because they felt safer doing that than going into hostels and things like that. I met representatives of UISCE in Leinster House last Tuesday. It was heartbreaking to listen to the stories of the people there. It was also inspirational to see how they worked through it and where they moved on. I raised this question in the Dáil yesterday evening. We have a vast homelessness problem but it affects those in addiction far more than others. If they are in hostel environments, they tend to be with other people who are going to break their recovery because they cannot get away from it. How does Ms O'Reilly think we could delivery emergency housing that is trauma informed and helps people rather than retraumatising them? That is where they have a safe environment and they feel secure, but they also have access to services they need, that others may not.

I was particularly impressed by Dr. O'Shea's emphasis on the dual diagnosis, which is a massive problem. We all know people in addiction have been sent to drug services and told they need mental health services and never the twain should meet. That is a huge problem because people do not fit into a box. I agreed 100% with his analysis that reducing intergenerational trauma requires strong policy direction. Do we need somebody central, at a departmental level, who would co-ordinate this and ensure we really have a comprehensive health-led approach to drug use? If not, what else would he suggest?