Pat Carey (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy Byrne for her comments. At the risk of a mutual admiration society emerging, I should say that Deputy Byrne has been around this particular area of community work for a long time and has a deep-rooted knowledge of it.

In terms of any doubts about the office, I assure Deputies it will continue and I am as committed to it as ever. There is no doubt that the levels of funding are not as generous as they were in the past, but the work groups are doing right across the country, whether in drugs task forces or any other area, are not driven by funding alone. Certainly, much of the work depends on proper and large-scale resourcing and perhaps we can never have enough. However, I will be working with my Minister of State and others in government to ensure the best use is made of available resources and indeed address as comprehensively as possible problem drug use and the issues associated with it, whether early school leaving, high levels of unemployment, anti-social behaviour etc. We need to focus on co-ordinating our approach even more sharply than in the past.

I agree with Deputy Byrne about the level of awareness that is needed. Only yesterday I was looking with my officials at the "Dial to stop drug dealing" campaign, which is quite successful. I certainly believe that is one area we can make use of to get the message across. I also believe, incidentally, that we should look at facilities such as Twitter, Facebook etc. — and I might even talk to colleagues in other parties in this regard — just to broaden the message, using more up to date media to get through to the target groups.

See this speech in context