Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 17 October 2024
Committee on Drugs Use
A Health-Led Approach: Discussion (Resumed)
9:30 am
Mr. Justin Kelly:
When I spoke at the citizens' assembly, one of the first things I said was that we police whatever the legislation is. Whatever legislation comes in, and not only in this area, we will police it. If there is new legislation coming in, we will give our views and observations on it. We were very consistent last year with the citizens' assembly on what our views were and they remain the same. Sometimes our views and observations are taken on board with new legislation and sometimes they are not. Whatever the end result of that is, we will police exactly to that legislation when it comes in.
Any significant changes around legislation mean a lot of work for us because we have got to look again at how we do things and at our policies and procedures. We have that and then we have a whole cultural change then. Any changes around drugs policy, and we have made some ourselves, involve considerable change projects for us. I am sure we will touch on the health diversion programme. People have different views on whether that goes far enough but even that coming in will be a huge organisational change for us. That will be the biggest change in drugs policy since-----