Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

I am pleased this debate is being held and the format it is taking in that the Minister of State will take questions at the end of the submissions. I thank the Minister of State for his efforts and dedication to this portfolio. He has been helpful to me, as my party's spokesperson for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs. His input shows the importance he places on addressing this issue. As the Minister of State will be aware, it is not an easy one. As Deputy Ring stated, one cannot identify a constituency that is not affected by drugs. Whereas some constituencies may get highlighted more than others due to major crimes such as murder due to drugs, it does not mean that those constituencies are different to any others. Unfortunately, in every town and village the illegal drugs trade is seen as an easy means of making a living.

I will help the Minister of State in every way possible and I will be as constructive as possible in trying to put the best strategy together. The Labour Party will support him in every way possible in trying to achieve that goal.

The national drug strategy has pinpointed four areas as being crucial in any attempt to address the life sentence that is drug use. The first area mentioned in the strategy is the reduction in the supply of drugs. The cold-blooded nature of recent drug related killings leaves us all asking what can be done. I am sure that looking at that aspect of it we see that, because of the vast amounts of money available, immediately a drug baron is taken out — to use their term — someone else takes up that particular plot. Given the large number of people involved in the illegal drugs trade, that poses a considerable problem in addressing the issue.

In founding the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB, the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Quinn, certainly set something in motion that would be a success but we must develop that further. In doing so, we must supply the CAB with every possible assistance and we must feed into that from each Garda district the information affecting each constituency. Why can we not support a CAB initiative to address people driving big cars, as Deputy Ring stated, and seemingly living the high life without any visible means of income? Why do we not work with the Garda in this?

I have been involved in public life for 15 years and the one matter that has really begun to annoy me is the movement towards isolating the Garda from the community. The Garda is blamed for everything now. I do not blame the Garda. I blame the Government for not giving the Garda the resources to address the problems. It is wrong that we isolate the Garda as a unit, but we should work with it and pressurise the Government into providing the Garda with the necessary resources. That is where we are losing the momentum in many of these matters. We are isolating the Garda when it is not its fault. It is the Government which is not supplying the Garda with sufficient gardaí, funding and training to address problems. We must give CAB additional personnel, provide them with additional training and determine from the international scene how countries using a similar directive address the issue. We should send CAB's members abroad to ensure we follow the top trends in detecting drug barons and removing them from society.

Unfortunately, drug barons are moving into my constituency because of Garda pressure in the cities etc. They are moving into the suburbs, as Kildare is viewed in respect of Dublin. We must continue to fight the battle. It will be tough because of the money available to the drug barons through their illegal operations and the fact that someone will always replace them. We must continue with our work and vigilance, but the Government must support the CAB system and provide the Garda with the funding, personnel and expertise to match this difficult problem.

Educating and raising awareness among communities is important. The time has come to see gardaí back on the beat working directly with communities and building contacts therein that would allow residents to report suspicious activity instead of living with the fear of reporting such crimes, a fear that is prevalent in many communities. I do not need to remind the Minister of State that my constituency of Kildare South has no community gardaí. The entire county has four community gardaí, two fewer than at the beginning of the year.

We blame the Garda, but this is not its fault. Money has not been invested and bodies have not been deployed to create the community activity required for them to work together. In many instances, the communities suffer and are in fear because of drug barons pressuring them to hide guns and drugs and not to inform the Garda of what is occurring. If we do not care for communities and if the people are not behind us, no strategy will work. This is the problem, namely, ensuring that the community is involved and wants to work with the Garda towards freeing the former of drug barons and threats to individual families and making it active and vibrant so that it can prosper, survive and care for everyone therein.

Any national drugs strategy must recognise the importance of the Garda winning the fight against the supply of drugs. Without proper resources, appropriate training and sufficient manpower, we are giving criminals an advantage on which they have recently built.

Recently, I spoke to a member of my GAA club, a secondary school teacher who took a course on drug awareness for the first time and was amazed by what was occurring. The teacher is a good community worker and is involved in every aspect of his community, but he was taken aback. He told me that, while he was grateful to know what was occurring, the follow-up was terrible because he had heard nothing since.

The Minister of State's most difficult job is to try to make the drugs issue relevant to communities on a weekly or daily basis while keeping it on the national scene. Newspaper pages will always be concerned with drug barons being taken out in Dublin, but the Minister of State, Deputy Pat Carey, will not be given the same page space to show the fear, dread and destruction caused by drugs. This problem is ours and the Minister of State's as the lead in this matter. Newspapers will cover everything else.

The Irish Examiner is to be congratulated on marvellous journalism, albeit frightening to read. The photograph showing the damage done to a young woman by drugs over a period was unthinkable, but it was the first time the position was outlined in a national newspaper. The Minister of State will never again be given such an opportunity to detail the problem or to try to align it with people so that they will attend seminars to ensure their children know what drugs can do. Were the photograph to be on the wall of any house to show children what destruction drugs can do, it would be a wonderful day's work. I hope the Irish Examiner will benefit.

The demand for drugs is at an all time high. As we approach Christmas, parties are prevalent. Last week, a terrible incident in Waterford led to 11 people being rushed to hospital because of drugs. The person in question, who is in receipt of disability allowance, is before the courts. We can now see how he makes money to supplement his lifestyle, namely, the supply of drugs, and to give him everything he could not attain due to a lack of income. I have submitted a question to the Minister in this respect for next Wednesday.

Christmas is supposed to be peaceful, happy and wonderful, but how will we highlight the types of problems that arose in Waterford? How will we get it into people's heads that this is an awful situation into which to lead someone? When children go places, families and parents in particular must know what is transpiring. If there is a house party, parents must ensure it is clean, enjoyable, well organised, well policed and one from which their children will come home. Everyone who goes to a party should not be searched, but there should be an overview of authority, namely, the person who allows children to go out or to house parties must lay down the law to the effect that, while they can enjoy themselves, there is a limit on how that enjoyment should be attained.

Drugs pose a problem in every constituency. Senior gardaí have noticed that the demand for cocaine has picked up in recent years as the country's wealth has increased. If the demand comes from people with money, there will be a supply, at which time we will realise the size of the problem. The actor Robin Williams joked that cocaine is God's way of saying that we are making too much money, but words of approval continue to be associated with its use. The words "recreational" and "lifestyle" only add to the problems in the continuing fight to educate and increase awareness, which must be the cornerstone of any strategy.

The Minister of State complained about a man who appeared on the "Late Late Show" and stated that recreational drug use was wonderful. The man stated that he could not have done some things without using drugs. How could this be allowed by the national broadcaster? How could Pat Kenny stand up and tell us that it was fine for the man to——

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