Mal O'Hara (Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I am a Belfast boy and I want to raise something in relation to the submission from the Irish College of General Practitioners. In Northern Ireland we had 218 deaths in 2020 and 213 in 2021. The ONS would say that is 11.5 per 100,000. Scaled up that is 115 per million, which is higher than the rate here in Ireland. The challenge of that is when we look at the European statistics we take the UK as a unitary state, but there are subtle differences in reporting across the four nations. We have a particular circumstance in the North, which is post-conflict endemic poverty and unfortunately a weak programme for government that does not talk about drug deaths. That is really disappointing.

I have a question about the diversionary threshold and the question the Vice Chair came to about being clear decriminalisation is of itself a good policy move, supported by both organisations. The caveat is that decriminalising substances, I think from the witnesses, was maybe not supported. If we follow that logic, if we decriminalise the person but not the substance, where is the diversionary threshold where it, in the witnesses' sense, potentially becomes somewhere where we have to refer someone to the police?