Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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I suppose that is part of the challenge in that as we start to think about this issue, people do not want to make things worse. Most people are in that space. As they do not want to make things worse, there is a lot of consensus now building around the health-led approach. As we delve more into it, however, there is the spectre of the industry being there and the intimidation, gangland violence and volumes of money. I know in my community, in some ways that is more of a threat to it than is the substance. In some ways, this debate does not deal with any of that and others would say the way forward is to fully legalise and regulate drugs and so on. Among the Irish public, and even within the House, people are very reluctant to do that because what they do not want to do is ti replace it with the huge corporate capital model that would be involved. It is a very difficult space for us to be in. Often what is said to us is that the drugs court is there and we are asked why do we not just roll that out.

I will ask about that in terms of whether the witnesses have examined or thought about the dissuasion courts that exist in Portugal and where there are similarities and differences to what they do. In a decriminalised model, where do the witnesses see the work they do being done, if not in the institutions they are in?