Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Like the other speakers, I pay tribute to Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan for bringing this comprehensive motion forward and highlighting the many important issues it raises.

It is timely that such a motion should come forward because alcoholism and drug addiction, particularly heroin addiction, have blighted our society for many years. We are now in an economic recession, with mass unemployment, austerity and cuts being visited in a serious and severe way on our society. We are recreating the conditions which have given rise to these problems at a serious level since the 1980s, and even further back with alcohol. We are now at a moment when we will create the conditions for all of these problems, which are already very serious, to get much worse if we do not take them seriously and deal with them in a sensible and rational way. More lives, families and communities will be devastated by these problems if we do not ensure it does not happen.

We do not need to quote statistics, although there are many, to know of the enormous overlap between alcohol addiction and heroin addiction and issues such as poverty, homelessness, poor quality housing and high levels of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment. We might add to that list the issues of suicide and mental illness. All of these are complex, multifaceted issues but there is unquestionably a huge correlation between them all. They must be dealt with if we are to make any serious effort to deal with heroin addiction, alcoholism or other forms of addiction.

It is no coincidence that the heroin epidemic first arose in this country in the 1980s during the last period of recession and mass unemployment. It ravaged lives, families and communities and we are still dealing with the legacy of the problems that developed then. Many of those problems have been passed down through the generations from parents to children and even to grandchildren. If we made any headway in trying to deal with those problems, it was because the communities most affected by them, the families and the rehabilitated addicts themselves, fought back, demanded resources, set up community initiatives, worked through community employment schemes to cope with and manage those problems and forced some sort of serious policy response from Governments over the last 20 years to a point where we did not resolve the problems but we were beginning to get a handle on how to address them.

Now, however, there is a threat that all that work could be undone if cuts are imposed on CE schemes that provide counselling services, drug rehabilitation schemes and outreach services to young people who are vulnerable. These CE schemes are holding together some of the most disadvantaged communities that are most affected by alcoholism and drug abuse and every cut to those services threatens to exacerbate the problem of heroin addiction.

It is rarely said, particularly about heroin, but there is an important distinction between heroin and many other drugs. It is almost a misnomer to talk about heroin getting people high, as if it is a fun drug. Heroin is a pain-killer; people take it to kill the pain. It is more akin to tranquilisers and legally prescribed drugs, which are also about sedating people with serious mental health and other problems. We must understand that it is the underlying problem of poverty, with many of those who have fallen into heroin addiction being the same people who went through industrial schools, sexual abuse and neglect and ended up in prison. We must deal with the problems at the root cause.

It means addressing issues such as homelessness and I note the strong correlation between homelessness, drug problems, alcoholism and so on. In addition, as previously noted, there must be a serious debate on decriminalisation, not in some sort of hippie way of thinking one should let it all hang out and let drugs be taken because it is cool but rather because criminalising the problem has not worked. It does not work and one must deal with it as a serious health and social problem. Moreover, one must ensure the provision of the resources and services necessary to deal with that problem and the underlying social causes, such as poverty and unemployment that create the conditions under which such problems can flourish.

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