Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State for his reply and wish to raise a few points. In recent weeks, many groups have approached Members to discuss the lack of funding and how they will be obliged to cut their budgets. My primary concern pertains to the small community groups that are funded from the task force and that I have discussed previously with the Minister of State. The people who have got off lightly in this regard are the drug barons, who have taken huge sums of money from communities and from those who live in the less well-off areas in particular.

Will the Minister of State commit himself to ring-fencing some of the money accruing to the Criminal Assets Bureau in order that it can be put back into communities and into some of the local drugs task forces in order that the aforementioned services can be kept in place? The Minister of State has acknowledged these services are on the front line and each community group continues to use its programmes in a particular way. The people who will lose out are not the drug barons or the drug users, but people who are at the lower end of the scale, namely, extremely young children, who are now becoming deeply involved in drugs.

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