Ms Anna Quigley:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and thank the committee for the invitation to speak. Citywide is a network of community organisations and activists that was set up in 1995 to campaign for a community development response to drugs, which is about involving the communities most affected by the drugs issue in developing and delivering the services and the policies to respond. Having started as a grassroots campaign, Citywide was invited in by the Government in 1996 and has been at the heart of the State’s response to drugs ever since. For well over a decade we experienced a genuine State commitment to community-led interagency partnership, while our experience in more recent years has been of a gradual and continuing decline of this commitment, to a point where it is no longer being implemented in practice.

We strongly agree with the statements at the previous Oireachtas committee by Paul Reid, chair of the citizens’ assembly, about the absolute urgency of the current situation and the lack of urgency in the response. What we have seen in recent years is a dismantling of the community-led partnership approach that energised our previous national drug strategies and a recentralisation of decision-making power back into the Department of Health and HSE. This results in the exclusion of our communities, including the families and the people who use drugs, from having a role to play in the policy decisions that have such a major impact on our lives. It is very starkly illustrated, as Mr. Collins has alluded to, by the direct exclusion of the three community networks from the national steering group. The three national community networks named in the current strategy as the national community representatives have been excluded. This, in our view, is an extraordinary sidelining and disrespecting of very extensive, hard-won and invaluable knowledge and experience that is crucial to the development and delivery of an effective national drugs strategy and it is not acceptable.

I will quickly highlight five key points which we think need to inform our next drugs strategy. They start with a social analysis. We need a social analysis so we know what exactly it is trying to address. The citizens’ assembly has recommended that drug misuse should be a policy priority, as part of an overall socioeconomic strategy. This is about looking at both the context and causes of drug-related harms. Obviously drugs have an impact across all levels of society. A significant majority of people who use drugs do not go on to develop an addiction. However, we know also the worst harms continue to affect the communities most affected by poverty and inequality. How we respond needs to be informed and shaped by these realities and not by moral judgment and stigma. One of the very clear messages from our social analysis is that there is no basis whatsoever for maintaining a policy of criminalising people who use drugs. This is reflected both in the recommendations of the citizens' assembly and in the current programme for Government and we need to move on it as an absolute matter of urgency.

On community development, our experience, and the evidence over many years, shows a community development approach is absolutely essential to effective drug policy. This is not just about the involvement of our communities in delivering services and activities; crucially it is about a role in decision-making and policymaking. In previous years, the role of the community reps - they are still working really hard to do it - on the local and regional task forces and on the national oversight committee very much reflected community development in action. It is crucial for the success of our next national drugs strategy that we look at how this community development process can be restored and revitalised. Again, the task forces have a crucial role to play in this. This will require resources to be allocated for local community development supports and networking at national and local levels. I strongly reiterate that there needs to be specific support and resources for the representatives of people who use drugs and of families, and also for the Traveller community, migrant and ethnic minority communities and the LGBTI+ community. We also need a much stronger voice for our young people. The first essential step is that we have got to be on that steering group.

Interagency partnerships are not just about turning up to committees, but about how work is done on a day-to-day basis. Again, in the past we could see that interagency approach developing really well, but a number of changes in recent years have led to a situation where the HSE has a dominant role in decision-making and allocation of funding and this has a negative impact on interagency working. This situation is mirrored at the national committee where the Department of Health and the HSE also play a dominant role and there has been a failure to invest in supporting interagency working. It is important to state clearly and acknowledge there are great people involved across all agencies and sectors, but everyone is being failed by the current systemic dysfunction.

On investment in services, we have to highlight, based on what we have done over 30 years and the experience in Portugal, that it is essential, as we move towards ending criminalisation, that we invest in a whole range of addiction services that are appropriate, but also in the related social services such as housing services, mental health services and employment supports. It is a positive for us in Ireland that we have the model of the community drug projects, because that in effect is what they have been set up to do. Yes, they can deal with the addiction, but they can also deal with and address all the other issues that impact on people's lives. We have a very good model but there are issues around how they would be able to continue their work given some of the performance measurement stuff that is coming down the tracks. We can pick up on that if we need to.

My final point is on structures for accountability. At the moment we do not have proper accountability for the delivery of the national drugs strategy.

We strongly support the citizens' assembly recommendation that implementation of the strategy needs to be led out by the Department of the Taoiseach working with a Cabinet subcommittee. Experience tells us we also need it to be supported and facilitated by something like the national drug strategy team, on which all the agencies and sectors were represented and which had somebody formally working as part of the committee. It is also crucial for the implementation of our drugs strategy that there is accountability for how effectively we are tackling the underlying causes of poverty and inequality. That means we need to re-establish some kind of independent and well-resourced combat poverty agency that can support us in doing this.