Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

No, the purpose of task forces, both regional and local, is to analyse the situation. They are not starting from square one, and are rather investigating gaps in services. Other agencies, including the HSE, for example, have always provided services. The purpose of regional drugs task forces is to analyse problems and investigate if gaps exist. They put plans forward, and these plans amounted to €12.2 million. It will take a couple of years for these to be up and running. Some are already proceeding better than others, but we allocated €5 million for this year, which should be more than enough.

Based on what has happened in Dublin, it would take two or three years to get a full plan in place. The task forces are working on this, although they were slow in the early days. At this stage they had interim co-ordinators, some of whom were probably pushing the issue better than others. All ten full-time co-ordinators have now been selected and they will all be in place within a couple of weeks. At that stage the process will proceed more quickly. At the end of the year, the money allocated for this year will all be spent, more or less.

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