Professor Catherine Comiskey:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present to it. I am the former chair of the European Union's scientific committee of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, EMCDDA. I am the ministerially appointed academic expert to the national oversight committee for the implementation of the national drugs strategy. I have acted as an expert consultant to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, and I have also been an external consultant to the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board, INCB. I am the sole author of two books: Addiction Research and Evaluation and Addiction Debates, published by Sage. I have also published more than 150 research papers, including work on estimates of prevalence. I was the first person to look at the number of people using heroin in Dublin in the late 1990s. I also published a research paper on treatment outcomes. I was the first person to show that treatment works. I was also the first person to look at ageing and opiate use. In addition, I was the first person to quantify and examine the children of parents who use substances. I am also a teacher and professor at the school of nursing and midwifery at Trinity College Dublin. I hold a PhD in biomathematics, epidemiology and statistics and I have a primary degree in mathematics and philosophy. I like to think I know how to read, write and do arithmetic, the three Rs of our educational system. On the personal side, I am a wife and a mother of four almost adult children. The reason I told the committee all of that is to give the background to the research, how I came to it, and the credibility of the research.

Given my background, I would like to speak not only about research but about policy and the impact of our collective policy and societal decisions. There are three main points I want to make: first, we must tackle stigma; second, I urge the committee to implement progressive policy; and three; I urge the use of independent research evidence and education. Those three points speak to the two points my colleagues have made.

If we are successful in developing progressive, evidence-led policy, then tackling stigma and improving education will also be achieved. I remind the committee that we as a country have done this before and I believe we can do it again. Let us consider the case of Patricia, who in my view is a hero. She was born in 1965, before we had these progressive policies, and she is currently 59-years-old if she is still alive. This is a real person I have come across in my research a number of times.

When she was seven, an age when most little girls were preparing for their first holy communion and were excited about their new dress, Patricia was sexually abused. We have addressed that now in our country and are working on that on an ongoing basis. When she was 15 in 1980, as most were thinking about school, friends and the pending junior cert, Patricia first injected drugs. The junior cert results were released last week. Can the committee imagine what Patricia was doing when she received her junior cert results? She was injecting drugs.

At the age of 20 in 1985, while same-sex partnership was a criminal offence and would remain so until 1993, Patricia had her first relationship with another woman. This was another reason to criminalise her and add stigma to Patricia; we let her down. At the age of 24 in 1989, when homosexuality was still illegal and AIDS raged across the globe, after many relationships with men and injecting drugs, Patricia was diagnosed as HIV positive because we did not have the needle exchange at that stage. At the age of 45 in 2010, when harm reduction was supposedly the prevailing treatment philosophy, Patricia, a woman who we remember had been sexually abused, was still required to undergo supervised urine screening before she was given her methadone.

This country has tackled many of these past challenges within our society. It is time now to be progressive once again and enable evidence-informed policy in nurse led prescribing - our research has shown people want it and it works and I can quote that research for committee afterwards if it wants. It is now time to tackle decriminalisation. I am not telling the committee to decriminalise but we need to tackle it. We need to reduce community and personal stigma, because communities are also stigmatised as well as people, and expand opportunities for addiction research and education to address Dr. Kelly's point about the workforce.

We are entering an era of global political and societal transformation which we see through our politics. I was at the UN last week and listened to how that shift is happening. We have a collective responsibility to be future ready. I really believe that because the future is actually now. I urge the committee to be progressive in their policy - the research is there - and I am happy to answer questions on the research as best I can.