Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

This is an incredibly diverse motion which contains some excellent ideas for dealing with addiction in Irish society. In fact, any specific aspect of the motion could be a single motion in itself. I will use the short time available to me to deal with drug addiction as it pertains to prisons.

Any meaningful policy for dealing with drugs must take a particular approach to prisons for a number of reasons. First, there is the fact that crime is the central reason for so many drug addicts ending up in prison. Obviously, the individuals themselves are victims. In addition, on a purely economic basis, there are benefits to society in terms of saving money from ending a revolving door by dealing with the issue of addiction when people are caught by the system, as it were. When people are taken out of society and incarcerated with plenty of time on their hands it should be an opportunity to rehabilitate them. Instead, it is a training ground to get more people hooked on and involved with drugs. Unless we deal with this issue, we are deceiving ourselves.

There are two issues involved. The first is the number of prisoners who have addiction problems and end up in prison as a result. A survey carried out on the psychiatric status of Irish prisoners in 2005 revealed that almost 60% of male prisoners sentenced had a drug dependency problem and 45% had an alcohol dependency problem. Only 26% of sentenced prisoners did not have an addiction problem of any nature. Other shocking surveys were carried out in the late 1990s and early in the last decade which showed that 21% of intravenous drug users first injected drugs while they were in prison. Our prisons are introducing people to a life of drugs rather than dealing with the issues while prisoners are in prison. This is despite the fact that there has been a huge shift in policy, with airport style searches being introduced since 2008 and a hard-nosed attitude being employed.

That does not work.

We must go back to the drawing board and we need a rational, sensible and non-sensational attitude to this problem because it has been the official strategy of the State since 2002 to have drug-free prisons. That is an embarrassment when we look at the policy pursued by the former Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell. It was based on increasing the resources to deal with searches and surveillance, amending the rules regarding visitors and contraband, mandatory drug testing, increased punishment for prisoners who were drug offenders and a much more hardline approach but the reality is that it has been a complete failure and we must now consider a different way to work.

It is completely wrong that we have a scenario where such resources are spent on security when we only have 24 full-time drugs counselling posts spread over 14 Irish prisons, with 4,000 Irish prisoners reliant on nine detox beds. It is completely back-to-front. I had the misfortune to spend a month in prison in the Dóchas centre ten years ago where I got to see at first hand many of the antics that went on and again the approach was the wrong way around. While I was there a young woman was released, took an overdose and died that weekend. It was a normal conversation in the prison. This young woman had been in and out of prison all her life. The prison wardens would report young people coming in and for a while they are getting steady meals, their skin is improving and they are starting to deal with their issues if they can keep them off the drugs. Suddenly, however, they are back out into the same conditions on the outside that led them into addiction in the first place, they take a hit and end up dead.

We need joined-up thinking. I was appalled that while I was in the centre, there was not a single counsellor to deal with all the issues, stresses and strains faced by those young women and mothers as a result of a life inside. There was a hairdressing unit that could have taught them a skill that could get them a job when they were released but no one tried to deal with the training aspect of rehabilitation.

Every society that places an emphasis on rehabilitation in such places sees it work because it is not just illegal drugs that are the problem, it is the pro-drug culture that exists in the prison. In 2010 we spent approximately €3 million on prescription drugs in the prisons. When I was there I was the only person in the prison who was not on drugs of some sort. People were either doing the illegal stuff or at night they queued for the tranquilisers and sleeping tablets that keep people sedated. It was scandalous that this should have been happening instead of proper intervention. We must look at this.

I fully support the idea being pushed by the Jesuits in particular about developing custodial treatment centres instead of sentencing, that people would agree to be sent to a treatment centre instead of a prison, perhaps with a reduced sentence on the basis that they get treatment. It would cost a fraction of what it costs now, would stop the revolving door and society would win. Unless we deal with this how we are deceiving ourselves.

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