Ms Anna Quigley:

Yes, I will keep it very brief. My apologies, I see that I should be addressing people as "Deputy" or "Senator", and I have been using first names. The decision has been made within the Department by the officials in the Department. The Minister has not opposed it. What hope for a political response. There needs to be political response saying that this is not acceptable. It is not acceptable to take the existing networks away from the representative role in the drugs strategy. That has been a core part of the approach and we would ask both the Minister of State and the senior Minister for a strong political response on that. Again, as people know, last week, the Taoiseach addressed our conference and talked about his commitment to this partnership approach. Therefore, this needs an intervention at the highest political level to say this is not acceptable and should not happen.

The definition of community has been changed within that document to focus on people who are using services or people who are representing people who are using services. We cannot reduce the people in our communities, the people who have so many different issues going on in their lives, the people whose drug use is related to so many other issues and the general people in the community to "people who use a service". That definition has to change and we call on that.

The Citizens' Assembly has been talked about and from a practical point of view, it would be important for it to happen because our national drugs strategy has lost its way and we need to put it back on track. The Citizens' Assembly is an evidenced-based forum where we can look at evidence in a more informed way and with more space and time to do it. That is essential for us to move forward.