Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
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Apologies. I had to nip out to the Seanad. I have a question which might be difficult to answer. Obviously this is a shared island. Does any of the international evidence around a divergence in drug policy approaches between states with a permeable border where people cross freely, where supply markets are all-island-based, and so on, indicate what impact changes that we were to make in the Republic might have? I will be frank that there is limited political courage in the North to address this issue. Drug deaths have definitely doubled and close to tripled in the last decade, exacerbated by poverty, the anti-poverty strategy, political instability, and disinterest from respective ministers. I note that Portugal has nine in 1 million deaths, the Republic has 97 in a million deaths and, looking at the statistics, while I know it is a conurbation, deaths in the Belfast local government area are 21.1 per 100,000, which is 211 per million. Are there any thoughts or international evidence about those different jurisdictions and how the impact of changed policy may improve lives?