Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I thank Deputy Rabbitte for sharing time with me. I welcome the legislation, the purpose of which is to give the Garda Síochána powers to seek the closure of head shops and any other premises where unlicensed psychoactive substances are sold for human consumption. The Bill makes it illegal to sell and advertise such substances. The apparent strength of the Bill is that it targets the generic product rather than the separate manifestations, which would have been the case under the Misuse of Drugs Act. If the Bill works effectively, it will end the dangerous phenomenon of head shops. The Bill is long overdue.

I have concerns over some of the cumbersome procedures relating to prohibition and closures. I wonder if they could be streamlined as I believe they will be difficult to operate. I also note that the Minister effectively relies on the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act for his main proposals in section 3 on the prohibition of sale, etc. Section 3(1) states: "A person who sells a psychoactive substance knowing or being reckless as to whether that substance is being acquired or supplied for human consumption shall be guilty of an offence." I hope the legislation being relied upon is tried and trusted. It dates back to 1997 and already in my constituency the Garda has been using the 1997 Act in a similar fashion. The provisions derive largely from that Act. Deputy Rabbitte queried whether there are loopholes as the definition of recklessness and so on have yet to be tested.

The history of drug abuse in Ireland is a sorry litany of State inaction. Here we come into the House three decades later and have to say that. Heroin devastated urban communities in the 1980s and 1990s. This was followed by cocaine, crack cocaine, happy pills and now we have the head shop phenomenon. What started and remained for nearly two decades as an urban phenomenon has, through the negligence and tardiness of the relevant State authorities and others, become a country-wide network of drug dealing. That is the unfortunate legacy of the States negligence and inaction. Were it not for Deputy Rabbitte, who became a Minister of State for a short period of time in 1995 to 1997 and took responsibility for this area, I am not sure anything would have ever happened. He established the local drugs task forces, which now represent the greatest barrier to the proliferation of drug abuse in the areas in which they operate. Indeed nothing has been done since Deputy Rabbitte left that office in 1997. In the past 13 years nothing has been done to review the operation, give the necessary resources and expand that initiative.

The Government has made heavy work of dealing with the phenomenon of head shops in the past three years. The number of head shops increased by more than fourfold in that time from 24 in 2007 to 102 operating throughout the country earlier this year. It has now reduced by more than 50%. The legal highs experienced by the consumers who bought psychoactive substances from those shops have caused serious health problems and given rise to an increase in hospitalisation, and there have been some fatalities. Young people were particularly vulnerable and an entire new cohort of drug consumers was created. This has particularly happened in less well off areas, such as my constituency and those of Deputies Rabbitte and Catherine Byrne. These are the target areas where something like this can spread like wildfire.

In my constituency of Dublin Central, 15 head shops were open at the height of the phenomenon, nearly all of them in the north inner city. Several incidents of violence and arson ensued. People throughout the country were frustrated with the Government's failure to act and marched on the head shops and on the Dáil. Still we saw inaction. The Minister for Health and Children dithered as she has always done. Eventually she declared her intention to ban some of the more dangerous substances under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. However, as soon as she made that decision she then sought and found another obstacle to give her an excuse for inaction, namely, the requirement to give three months' notice to the European Commission. That was patent nonsense because anybody reading the regulations would have seen that the Commission had foreseen the possibility of a serious threat to health of substances of this nature and specifically allowed for an exemption. It took three months for the Minister to discover this section. When she applied for an exemption, she was given it overnight. She introduced the statutory instrument on 11 May 2010 and, subsequently, many of the shops have closed.

Already new products are on the market. Three week's after the Minister's ban, researchers from Trinity College identified nine new legal drugs being sold at head shops. The appearance of a number of new outlets also came about very quickly. Some have closed and others have opened. It is only a matter of time until a wide range of new legal highs is available. The so-called godfather of the head shops, who operated in my constituency, has now moved to Bulgaria to operate his empire.

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