Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)

I gather the Department of Education and Science is working on finalising work information books with the Department of Health and Children about drugs, generally, focusing in particular on the legal highs Deputy Byrne is concerned about, as I am.

The big challenge now is to drive through the new strategy and ensure that the substance misuse strategy is implemented as quickly as possible. Above all, I do not want to see a turf war between Departments as to whether the implementation of that strategy should be with the Department of Health and Children, my Department or whatever, because as many of us know, such a development has bedevilled many previous campaigns in terms of alcohol awareness programmes and so on. I certainly believe much ground work has been done. I have read through the files over the last couple of days about the progress that has been made and am actually very confident that we shall have a substance misuse policy that probably will be a leader in the approach to be taken on substances legal and illegal. It might be copied in time by many other jurisdictions.

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