Dr. Richard Healy:

I have worked in the Prison Service. I worked as a training and employment officer for IASIO. I have seen people being inhibited from entering the labour market because of reasonably small criminal charges relating to cannabis. This causes difficulty with re-entering or entering the labour market. We also have a standard, uniform way of treating people but it has to be bespoke. Is it a good idea to send an 18-year-old who might have taken heroin a few times to Coolmine Lodge for a year or Trinity Court, one of these centralised clinical settings? I am not saying they are not good places but are they a good place for someone who is 18 years old and is just dipping their toe into addiction or drug use? Instead we have these uniform, standardised approaches. We have an assumption that everyone who takes drugs is the same and should be treated in the same way. I understand there are resource issues but the question is whether we can-----