Ms Aoife Bairéad:

They came into existence, as has been said, after the Rabbitte report as well and were designed to try to bring community organisations into a position to address the harms of drugs in communities. There are regional drugs task forces as well. I am aware they are not here to speak for themselves, but by and large they operate in the same way. The drugs task forces were a way for community organisations to come together with statutory and voluntary agencies to try to ensure the services being provided and how they adapted or grew was built around a shared understanding of what the community needed.

Most drugs task forces have monthly meetings, chaired by an independent chair. We are all volunteers. They have a co-ordinator who ensures the day-to-day running and the moving of strategies and plans forward. They also bring groups together. Most drugs task forces have subgroups that will look at particular issues, and these might be concerned with young people, family support, treatment and recovery and those types of spaces. Within that, it was agreed task forces would have a budget to employ a certain number of people but also to fund projects and other pieces of work in their communities that would address the specific needs identified by those task forces. It was a community-based collaborative approach. Some of those funding mechanisms have become much more fixed and permanent. There are projects that are just funded year-on-year through the task force. As I said, some funding comes in that one-off or short-term way and some we apply for to expand or add to our services.