Ms Anna Quigley:

What the Deputy is talking about are exactly the kinds of conversations we were having back in 1996 when we were developing the drugs strategy at that stage. When the structures were set up with the national drugs strategy scheme and the task forces, it was with exactly what the Deputy is saying in mind. Obviously, it is the Government's responsibility to come up with the overall strategy, but the drug strategy team had representatives from all the key Departments and, as I said in my presentation, the key difference is that it is not just a committee. We have heard from members of this committee the frustration every time a new committee is set up. For the first few meetings everyone comes and then it fades out. What was different about the national drugs strategy team was that, for the civil servants and the representatives from agencies who were on it, it was half of their working week. For half the week, they were located as part of that team. They therefore all worked together in their day-to-day work, and that made a crucial difference in actually being able to deliver.

A very good example is what were called the CE drug projects, which are now the drug rehab projects. Everyone was sitting around a table and the issue would come up and was very visible in the community. When the methadone programmes had started and were expanding, one of the problems was that people on the programme had nothing to do all day. When someone is actively using drugs, they will be very busy because they constantly have to find them and so on, but when people went onto methadone, they had the rest of the day and that was not a good thing. I do not mean this in a derogatory way but normally a State agency's response will be that an issue is something for another agency, but in this instance the issue was put in the middle of the table, so to speak. Everyone was sitting around the table and asking what each could do about that. FÁS came forward and said it had CE schemes and they were 20 hours a week but perhaps it could adapt them. Then the VECs, as they were, suggested that they could include an education input into that and then the Department with responsibility for children would have come in with something else. It is that kind of thinking that is needed. I know it sounds so basic and common-sensical, but we do not operate like that normally. That is not the normal way. That is why I feel so passionate about it but people tell us you cannot do things that way.

Another key point is that the community representatives who were there at that table were part of the decision-making as well. We are now told that communities cannot be involved in the decision-making. They may be consulted but no more than that. It can be done. It was done and it worked and everybody benefited from it. Everybody felt they were part of something and that everyone was working together. That model is a long time gone. We need to name it, though, and say it is possible to do it within the Irish State structures. It is quite possible. All the people from the various agencies who were involved found it incredibly positive. It is so much more efficient because there are not all the crossovers that can happen otherwise.

There was the same model at local level and in the task forces on the ground. The idea is the overall direction is set at national level but its implementation on the ground, such as how more supports are provided for young children, might be very different in the Deputy's area in Cork than what we need to do in the north inner city in Dublin, for example, or a rural area in Offaly, for example. It might be different but the task forces were given the authority to say to people in local areas that they knew what was going on on the ground and they could make the decision on implementation. It is so efficient compared with someone at a high level nationally making the decision about it. We have lost all that.