Ms Grace Hill:

I thank Deputy Gino Kenny for that; we appreciate it. I will refer to what Mr. Hamilton has said, and the Deputy asked what could happen. When the Deputy referred to Fintan O'Toole's article, I thought it was excellent as well. It stated that not only could a public health crisis happen, but that it is happening. This is why we did the research. We did the research to evidence what we have been talking about since 2017. We are now coming into 2022 and we are no further along nationally. Locally, we have done something in trying to address this - firefighting, if you like. We want to focus on changing the narrative. We want to focus on changing drugs policy more widely, as Ms Quigley said. We are losing that because they are withdrawing the community voice from the national structures. We have to have that as the background.

There is a public health crisis happening now. Another reason for doing the research was that we knew the issue around crack was that it destroys communities. We also wanted to be ready for something else that could be coming down the road, which is crystal meth. We want to get the hang of this beforehand by preparing for something that we do not want to happen. The public health crisis is happening now and we do not want it to grow. In this meeting, we are talking about putting things in place. The discussion needs to happen with the Minister of State and the drug programme unit, and everyone needs to be at the same table. The HSE addiction services need to be equally empowered.

For us at the moment, through the research, we have come here today because of resources in the first instance, while we know the other piece needs to change. As Fintan O'Toole said, we need to learn those lessons of the past. Task forces were established at a time of crisis. Let us try to get ahead of this even now if we can.