Ms Anna Quigley:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to be here today. CityWide is a network of community organisations and activists set up in 1995 to campaign for a community development response to drugs. That is about involving the communities most affected by the drugs issue in developing and delivering the services and responses we need. CityWide has been at the heart of the State’s response to drugs since first being invited in by Government in 1996. For more than a decade from 1996 to 2009, we experienced a genuine State commitment to community-led inter-agency partnership, but our experience in more recent years has been of a gradual and continuing decline of this commitment to a point where it is no longer implemented in practice, in our experience. We strongly agree with the statements by Paul Reid, chair of the citizens’ assembly, about the absolute urgency of the current situation and with what we have heard from committee members about how the drug and alcohol task forces have been sidelined, structures for inter-agency accountability are not working and investment across services is inadequate. It is important to state clearly and acknowledge that there are great people involved across all agencies and sectors but everyone is being failed by what is basically systemic dysfunction.

I will highlight five key points as to how we can address this. The first is a social analysis. In our view, a starting point needs to be a social analysis that looks at both the context and causes of drug-related harms. We know that drugs have an impact across all levels of society, that a significant majority of people who use drugs do not develop an addiction and that the worst harms continue to affect communities most affected by poverty and inequality. This is key because how we respond needs to be informed and shaped by these realities and not by moral judgement and stigmatisation. One of the very clear messages from our social analysis is that there is no basis for maintaining a policy of criminalising people who use drugs. This has been supported by evidence the committee has heard from a range of international speakers. It is also our experience in the community that a policy of criminalisation has the effect of undermining every other positive action we might take. It needs to end now. The worst harms relating to the drug trade also impact the communities most affected by poverty and inequality. The levels of fear generated as a result of intimidation and violence in our communities prevent the normal social justice process from working. We need to start an honest discussion about how we can address this reality.

The second point is about community development. In previous years, the role of the community representative on the drug and alcohol task forces reflected community development in action. In other words, the people most affected were involved in the responses. As the role of the task forces has been sidelined, so has the role of community representatives. It is crucial that we have a conversation now about how this role can be restored and revitalised. This will require resources to be allocated for community development supports and networking at local, regional and national levels. There also needs to be support and resources for the representatives of people who use drugs, UISCE, families, the national family support steering group and very much the representatives of the Traveller community, Pavee Point. A new challenge for us is to develop the involvement of migrant and ethnic minority communities and the LGBTI+ community.

The third key point is the need for interagency partnership. It is not just about committees; it is about what interagency means in day-to-day working. The drug and alcohol task forces were set up as a structure to support and facilitate that day-to-day working at a local and regional level. They worked as an effective model for many years in our experience but a number of key operational changes to the task forces in recent years have not been positive in their impact. We need to look at this and what we can do now to address the negative impacts.

The fourth point is investment in services. Our experience over 30 years and the experience in Portugal in the 20-plus years since it decriminalised show how essential it is as we move towards ending the criminalisation of people who use drugs that we invest in a range of addiction services appropriate to people’s needs and in the related social services, in particular housing and employment supports, mental health services, childcare and psychology services. It is a positive for us in Ireland that we have in our community drug projects and community youth projects. They are an ideal model for delivering this integrated approach to meeting people’s needs but there has been a failure to invest in and build on the projects’ potential. This is an extraordinary and unacceptable waste of opportunity that needs to be immediately addressed.

The fifth point relates to structures for accountability. This came up in the committee's discussions today. We strongly support the citizens' assembly's recommendation that implementation of the drugs strategy needs to be led by the Department of the Taoiseach working to a Cabinet subcommittee chaired by the Taoiseach. Experience tells us that the process of having a high-level committee involved needs to be supported and facilitated on a day-to-day basis by a full-time working structure similar to the national drug strategy team, which was in place for more than ten years, because it provides a crucial link between communities, the work of task forces on the ground and the Cabinet subcommittee. It is also crucial to the implementation of our drugs strategy that there is accountability for how effectively we tackle the underlying causes of poverty and inequality. To do this, we need to re-establish an independent and well-resourced Combat Poverty Agency which should also be located within the Department of the Taoiseach.

As we look to move away from policies based on moral judgement, stigma and shame, we need to engage in a conversation with wider society through the roll-out of a national anti-stigma campaign that builds on the key principles of the initial campaign carried out through CityWide and the SAOL Project, co-designed and delivered by people with lived experience of using drugs and experiencing drug-related stigma. I am happy to take questions from members on any of that.