Mr. Thomas McCarthy:

I had a good go at it. I did not go into all the follow-up quotes, etc., but I looked at the recommendations.

When I saw it, I was warmed. I was happy to see it. We had been involved in the citizens' assembly, made submissions to it, etc. When I read it, I thought that is backing up everything that the citizens' assembly was saying. My next thought was "they have to go with this now, they will have to take on all those recommendations". The citizens' assembly is after hearing from every expert they could find and every community member and person affected by addiction. All these voices and all of these experts fed submissions into it. We have these two documents and you cannot argue with them. Even though I felt they had to go with it, inside me was the sceptic and the cynic thinking that they are not going to do it and it is not going to happen.

What I would say is, I am hopeful. This is progressive and informative. It is something that we should do. It is community based and is fed into by the people. This is the people's Parliament. The people have spoken. They have said we must implement these actions. So let us get them across the line. That is my hope.

As someone who works in the Traveller community, I would say there are lots of policies and strategies but they are rarely given enough money. All of the money that these services need should be given to them - end of story - and no questions asked.