Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will start by saluting all those in the Visitors Gallery who have come to listen to this debate. I also salute those in the audio-visual room which, I understand, is absolutely packed.

On 2 November a woman left her house in Aghabullogue, County Cork to set off on a 300 km walk to Dublin. She had her coat, a phone, a bottle of water and a couple of pears. She has put her hand over her face at the mention of the couple of pears she was carrying. We can only imagine the despair Vera Twomey must have felt the previous evening when she saw her daughter, Ava, aged six years, have a particularly serious seizure.

As has been mentioned, Ava has Dravet syndrome and has often experienced seizures up to 15 or 20 times a day. Vera must have felt this was the last straw and thought she had to do something for her child. She set about walking 300 km to Dublin - what determination that shows. She was nine hours down the road, I believe around the Mallow area, when the phone call came through from the Minister. She suspended the walk on the promise that action would be taken, and here we are.

Of course, it is not just Dravet syndrome. As other Deputies have mentioned, for people who have had chemotherapy and who as a side effect have serious vomiting, medicinal cannabis can be a real assist, as it can be for people with multiple sclerosis who are suffering from muscle spasms and for those with high levels of anxiety, sleep disorders and chronic pain. We are talking about tens of thousands of people in this country.

The Barnes report from the UK has been mentioned. It was undertaken on foot of the work of the all-party parliamentary commission, which commissioned Professor Mike Barnes, a consultant neurologist, to produce the document, Cannabis: The Evidence for Medical Use. That report calls for legislation to legalise medical cannabis and that this be done as a matter of urgency. I note the comment of Professor David Nutt, the former chief government drugs advisor in the UK, and now professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, who said:

Cannabis has been a medicine for more than 4,000 years, and in the UK was in the pharmacopoeia until 1971 when the USA forced us to remove it as part of the war on drugs. Now, over 200 million Americans have access to medicinal cannabis whereas we do not...

What he is making reference to is the fact that medicinal cannabis has now been legalised in 25 US states. That is also the case in 11 European countries, including Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.

The point has to be made in this discussion that successive Governments in this country, led by both Fianna Fáil and by Fine Gael, have kept medicinal cannabis illegal for decades. There has been a lot of talk in recent times about populism. This was cheap populism of the worst kind because, in striking an anti-drugs pose, and there were probably votes in it at a certain point, this was done at the expense of the health and well-being of tens of thousands of ordinary people. To add insult to injury, those who went out to buy cannabis in order to relieve their pain, or who grew it at home or in their back garden, were criminalised or left themselves open to criminal prosecution. It is my opinion that those people are owed an apology, and I hope the Minister will consider offering an apology to those people at some stage over the course of this debate, whether tonight or in the course of the next weeks as this debate continues.

Thankfully, change is in the air. There has been a sea change in popular attitudes and the campaigning work of many activists, patients and sufferers throughout the country, including the recent brave campaigning work of one Cork mother, has moved this issue very much up the agenda. I also salute the work that is being done by Deputy Gino Kenny in this regard. It has dragged the Government to the point where we are now on the verge of recognising some kind of reality in regard to these issues. It is very important that, after a good debate tonight and the passing of Second Stage, we move quickly and urgently to real progress on this issue in the short weeks and months ahead.

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