Ms Anna Quigley:

It would seem logical there has to be a reason that the Department is doing what it is doing but it has not given us any reasons. We asked as part of the mid-term review that there be a review of the structures to look at how effective they were. There was no such review so there is nothing there. There is no report or anything to give evidence that this is a good thing to do.

It was at the last national oversight committee meeting that the Department presented the idea of a civil society grouping, which would be a wider grouping than the current networks. The networks are totally open to that. We said the more voices we have involved the better. We told the Department we were happy to have discussions around that with it, which we always are. In the discussions it quickly became clear that the Department was thinking of the civil society grouping as a replacement for our networks, while we saw it as a good additional resource to bring in more people.

Our networks are named in the national drugs strategy. That is not by accident. There is a clear rationale as to why we need representation of particular communities and groups like families and people who use drugs. The rationale is clear that we need representation of the people most affected by the issues. That rationale is still there now as it was. We have not been presented with any argument against that. Having had a couple of meetings to discuss this with the Department, the networks went back and said we were happy to have ongoing discussions about the broader civil society grouping but that we were clear on the rationale as to why our networks with 25 years' experience should continue to be written in as core constituents of the national drugs strategy. The response to that was basically "Well, it's going ahead on Friday anyway". We do not have a rationale, unfortunately.

I say this with respect to everybody but in the last couple of years there has been for the first time in our 25 years' involvement a sense of silencing of the community sector and that the space for voices that are questioning or dissenting is not there anymore. I am not saying that is the reasoning but we have not been given any other reasoning. I do not know the reason. We have no statement of the reason. We asked the Minister of State to meet the community networks a couple of months ago. We did not get a reply to the request.