Lynn Ruane (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I apologise as I will have to leave the meeting for an emergency debate in the Seanad. I hope the witnesses know I support all their work. I hate to have to leave in the middle of a session.

It has been incredibly difficult over the past ten years to watch the erosion of community within the area of drug services, drug treatment provision and everything that entails. I remember, while in a previous role as chair of a task force, being quite startled by a comment made by an unelected official. Unfortunately, there are too many unelected officials gatekeeping in this area. The witnesses may resist saying that, but I can and will say it. The comment made was "We do not fund you for that". "That" was everything related to the reasons somebody might end up in addiction in the first place, whether it is substandard living conditions, proximity to violence in their community, intergenerational trauma or poverty or educational attainment, in other words, all the different things we, as service providers, know contribute to how somebody may respond to substance use or drug use in their community and how entrenched that may become in their lives. Much like Ms Sweeney mentioned regarding racism, we know all these areas are so interconnected to a person's experience of life and, therefore, their relationship to substance. That struck me because for the past ten or 15 years, we have seen a real effort to centralise drug services and provision as only being provided for the specific role of drug prevention without taking everything else into account. We are seeing that ideology - and it is part of an ideology - seep into all the other decisions being made. It involves keeping people out of the room and keeping task forces, Pavee Point, the Union for Improved Services, Communication and Education, UISCE, and family support groups off steering groups and out of decision-making. It is usually those who offer class analysis as a way of understanding that all those other conditions lead to the situations people are living in that are being excluded.

What is the importance of all the organisations I named being in that space? What impact is that having on people being able to do their job effectively? People have had to become activists and lobbyists to get into the room, rather than being activists for the people they are working with and their needs. They have been somewhat removed and they have to fight to be recognised for their role and the work they do in their communities. I ask for a comment on what the service providers feel is impacting their ability to be in the room or on the steering group in the first place. I also ask them to comment on the reference group, which feels tokenistic. Because the activists were not included, this reference group, which does not have all task forces on it, will be created. Actually, it may have representatives of the task forces in the Minister's constituency but not the Dublin task forces. I am open to correction on that. The reference group does not have the Dublin or other big urban areas task forces represented.

Is the reference group needed or does everybody who is supposed to be on the decision-making bodies need to be on the steering group? That is a wide question but I am trying to get to the heart of that. An effort was made many years ago to completely remove community from the strategy. They did not manage to remove the word "community", but they made a pretty good effort at removing community in the real sense of the word from the activity of the work. I ask for comments on that.