Ms Deirdre Malone:

On the issue of the impact of convictions, it is a national disgrace that Ireland is the last country in the EU to introduce spent convictions legislation. Spent convictions legislation was first debated and considered in 2006-2007. It is now 2015 and we still have a Bill which has not been seen in over a year and a half. That is a disgrace. This is something we have campaigned on for many years. In the absence of moving forward on decriminalisation, the spent convictions legislation must be enacted. We get calls daily from people with convictions for minor offences who cannot move on with their lives and who, as Ms Quigley said, do not even try. That obstacle relating to the jobs market is entirely at odds with the policy of this Government on rehabilitation. The passage of that legislation must happen in the coming months.

There was a suggestion from Dr. Eamon Keenan that there may be some evidence that retaining criminalisation acts as a deterrent. If criminalisation of drug possession was a deterrent, we would have far fewer people in our courts every day facing drug possession charges. A study carried out by Release in respect of the position in 21 jurisdictions indicates that decriminalisation of possession of some or all drugs resulted in no increase in the prevalence of drug use. Indeed, the World Health Organisation, WHO, agreed that there was no clear link between punitive enforcement and lower levels of drug use and that moves towards decriminalisation were not associated with increased drug use. A British Home Office paper found that, looking across different countries, there was no apparent correlation between the toughness of a country's approach and the prevalence of adult drug use. The idea that criminalisation has ever acted as a deterrent to possession is simply incorrect.