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:

I will concentrate on Europol. It is an agency that co-ordinates a lot of policing activity around Europe. We have EMPACT, which co-ordinates all the work of police forces across Europe. I am the national representative for EMPACT here. I think next week I will go to Europol and meet all my colleagues. We will decide our priorities for the coming years, what crime areas we will look at and what we will concentrate on. We have operations in all those areas which then devolve down. For example, if they come down to Mr. Boland, we will say we are concentrating on a certain crime type - it could be human trafficking or various other crime types. That then becomes completely operational. We set up operational groups and joint investigation teams with our colleagues around Europe.