Brian O'Shea (Waterford, Labour)

Ba mhaith liom mo chuid ama a roinnt leis an Teachta Upton. Tá áthas orm labhairt faoin dochar atá á dhéanamh ag drugaí mídhleathacha ar fud na tíre, sna cathracha, sna bailte agus sna sráidbhailte ar fad.

I welcome this private Members' motion on the misuse of drugs. It affords the House the opportunity to debate the serious threat to our society posed by increasing drug use and the parallel horrific and violent increase in drug dealing. Irish-based drug dealing is not confined to the Irish market. In his 2004 book Gangs, the author Tony Thompson, crime correspondent for The Observer, made some startling revelations. The following quotation from his book comes from one of the biggest cocaine dealers in the north east of England:

A lot of the stuff I deal with comes via Ireland. There's a lot going on over there because the Irish navy consists of something like two rubber dinghies and one of those inflatable bananas. There's so much coastline, they just can't patrol it all. It's absolutely wide open.

This quote does not, of course, do justice to the Irish Navy. However it outlines the real situation with regard to our ability to patrol our coastline effectively to prevent the entry of illegal drugs.

Mr. Thompson goes on to state that the part the dealer finds hardest at the moment is not bringing the drugs into the country but getting the money out to pay for them. There are plenty of friendly bureaux de change that he and his fellow gang members use to change small denomination notes into European currency, but the difficult part is actually getting the cash out to Spain, Amsterdam or Ireland to pay for whatever is coming in. The book goes on to describe the case of a man who was arrested some years ago as he was boarding a flight from Heathrow to Dublin carrying two suitcases containing more than £500,000. He admitted being paid £35,000 a time to take cash-filled suitcases to Ireland. At the time he was caught, he had already completed approximately ten such trips from either Heathrow or Newcastle. He admitted to working for a south London based drugs smuggling syndicate which was making at least £500,000 per week.

This information gives some impression of the extent of the Irish illicit drugs scene. An estimate of the amount of cocaine arriving in Ireland between 1995 and 2004 published by the Joint Committee on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs was €5.37 billion. Provisional figures for 2005, recently sent to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform by the national drugs unit, indicate that the cocaine market in Ireland is worth an estimated €210 million. This is almost a tenfold increase in just ten years.

Cocaine dealing has spread throughout the country. In my region, the south east, the percentage of those seeking the support of regional services as a result of cocaine misuse was 0.5% in the year 2000. Of the 2,786 who sought treatment for alcohol and drug abuse in 2005, 2.3% were misusing cocaine. In this region there is some anecdotal evidence that cocaine users are presenting with chest pains. Cocaine can cause problems for the heart and lungs.

The use of cocaine is spread evenly across the region. In gender terms, 73.8% of those presenting for treatment — for all drugs — in the south east region are male, while 26.2% are female. In terms of age, four of those presenting for treatment were between ten and 13 years old, while 59 were aged between 14 and 17 years. While extremely welcome capital investment in drug prevention is focused on the main urban centres, there is a need to spread this investment to both large and small towns throughout the country. The fact that cocaine is seen by many as a drug of leisure that has no detrimental effects is worrying.

The pattern for so-called leisure users of cocaine seems to be first to consume a large amount of alcohol, followed by the cocaine. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs is currently preparing a report in regard to including alcohol in the national drugs strategy. The trend or pattern that has been identified would certainly vindicate this inclusion.

The conclusions and recommendations of the same Oireachtas committee report on the treatment of cocaine addiction, with particular reference to the Irish experience, refer to the need for preventative strategies, including health promotion and basic factual information on cocaine and its risks, to be provided in leaflet form and in the media. There is further reference to the need for specific psycho-education to expose the misconceptions about enhanced performance in sport through cocaine use. A further key element of the committee's conclusions was that professionals from a wide range of disciplines must be prepared to target schools and youth clubs to demystify cocaine use and expose its dangers.

There is an onus on all of us in public life to get across to the so-called leisure users of cocaine the message that the massive proceeds from the drugs industry are being enjoyed by ruthless criminals. These individuals have brought gun crime to new levels, with a subsequent disregard for the value of human life. I agree with the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform on the point he made in his contribution that unless people stop taking these drugs, the Garda and other agencies will always be in a catch-up situation with regard to dealing with the problem. If there is no demand, supply is irrelevant. Too many people take the view that what they are doing is harmless to themselves and others, but they should take into consideration the vast sums of money coming into the coffers of ruthless criminals who are prepared to go to any length to protect their patch. We must try to make an impact and point out again and again to people who use cocaine as a leisure drug that what they do does not just harm themselves, but contributes to the high level of crime in our society. We need to stamp it out as quickly and effectively as possible.

We should pay particular heed to the recent comments of the Garda Commissioner, Noel Conroy, on this matter:

We are doing extremely well in terms of detecting the trafficking of drugs. But when you come down to the whole area of shooting individuals, of course the help and co-operation coming from the people involved is, you could say, nil... Many of the weapons being used by drug gangs in fatal gun attacks had been sourced from eastern Europe. Others were entering the State with shipments of illegal drugs. However, Gardaí were succeeding and many people were before the courts at present.

The most important thing I have to say this evening relates to a new and even more harmful drug that is emerging in Ireland. I have dealt primarily with cocaine so far. Crack cocaine has been identified on the streets of Dublin's north inner city. I refer again to Tony Thompson's book to give some idea of the effect of crack cocaine:

The effect of the drug alone was enough to guarantee its success. The instant euphoria that a rock of crack produces usually lasts forty or fifty seconds, a few minutes at the most, and a mere flash in the pan compared to the thirty-minute cocaine high or the three to four hour trip from a dose of heroin. But with crack, the high has no parallel. There isn't anything else like it. Around seven per cent of cocaine users go on to develop an addiction, and even then the process can take up to eighteen months. With crack around 80 percent of users go on to develop an addiction, usually within two weeks of their first smoke.

Tony Thompson goes on to say that 73% of children who were battered to death by their parents in the New York area in 1988 were the offspring of crack users, while 40% of homicides in the city were crack-related. The level of crime associated with crack addiction is more devastating than that of all other drugs combined as addicts in their thousands become criminals and pursue cash for their next fix. It is imperative that the spread of crack cocaine use in Dublin and throughout the country is prevented. The Government and all other relevant arms of the State must urgently mobilise in this regard. While the latest information states that crack cocaine is relatively confined to one part of inner city Dublin, I do not doubt that it will spread to other cities and towns like wildfire unless we are vigilant and we show a great commitment to stemming its spread. I have focused on cocaine misuse as it is the most serious drug problem confronting us at present. If we do not take immediate action to tackle the problem of crack cocaine use, however, in future years we will have to address a crack epidemic that is doing even worse damage to our cities, towns and communities.

The Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, which is responsible for the matters on which I am the Labour Party's spokesman, has the co-ordinating role in combating drug use in partnership with the local and regional drugs task forces. This year's Estimates provide €5 million for the regional drugs task forces as they roll out their plans. It is estimated that it will cost €12.2 million to finance the plans when they are rolled out in full. Therefore, the State has decided that less than half the drug action plans will be implemented this year. As I previously said to the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, the sense of urgency that is needed is just not there. Action needs to be taken by a range of Departments, but for the purposes of this debate I am most interested in the work of the Department with which I deal.

The plague that could arise in this country if crack cocaine takes hold here will be not prevented if the current laid-back attitude of various Ministers to the problem continues. We have to agree that we face a substantial problem and mobilise all the resources of the State to combat it. The point that is sometimes made by the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, with whom I do not often agree, bears repeating — as long as there are customers, the supply will follow. People who use cocaine as a leisure drug should think again.

See this speech in context