Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael)
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I always love the Leas-Chathaoirleach's questions. I thank the witnesses, as this has been an incredibly respectful conversation, as well as unbelievably illuminating. I always hated the term "drug addict". People are not drug addicts, but mothers, sons and fathers. They are people who have dreams, hopes and everything for their lives and I am very much influenced by Gabor Maté's writings on his encounters with his patients and how honest he is about his prejudices and all the complexity of patients as they present. We are really respectful here and I hear that from both organisations in a way I just love.

I have three areas of questions. I thank Dr. Quinlan for talking about the Medical Council and prescriptions. I worked as a counselling psychologist in Ballyfermot for a number of years. I felt there was an instant prescribing. I would have someone coming through counselling and all of a sudden they had gone to a doctor who was prescribing. I often wondered whether there was an issue of fear of litigation with doctors, namely, that if somebody has a particular presentation there is a fear of not prescribing or something along those lines. Are there impediments there we should be lifting? If you are involved in the counselling process it prolongs it. I, unusually, would be of the view that my job was to get a person to a place where they had the skills to be able to live their life rather than forever coming to me. I feel prescribing is too quick, but I also respect very much what Dr. Crowley was saying around benzos, the detox and all that and that there is really good practice on prescribing. I would like to comment on that more.

I love that Mr. Murray took a stand, despite the political considerations, to ensure there was a needle exchange and that people had somewhere to come to. There is a responsibility to tackle the denial among the public and as a nation and to deal with the stigma. Every community, no matter where they are, has people who have addiction issues, especially in the area of drugs. It may be masked in more upwardly mobile communities than it is in socially deprived communities and my home constituency of Dublin South-Central particularly, but it is there and so we should have the response there. I would love for us to move so we have a response when it comes to naloxone that is almost like what we have with EpiPens.

As the witnesses speak and as I hear the amazing insights and the responses, I think of my role as chair of a drugs task force. I have had the privilege of being involved in the Dublin 12 local drugs and alcohol task force since 2019. On that, we have the Garda, the HSE, probation services and practitioners, but we have no pharmacists and no doctors. I wonder whether that could be better informed structurally because at every meeting we deal with trends and what is emerging in the community. Maybe we would have better community responses if we looked structurally at that level of greater response as part of the community change and ramping up the health response and moving to that. I am interested in hearing the witnesses' comments on that.