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

Despite the fact that Deputy Gino Kenny's Cannabis for Medicinal Use Regulation Bill was passed by the House in December with unanimous support and despite the fact that in the past ten days the IMO, the representative organisation for the medical profession in this country, stated medical cannabis should be available on a GP's prescription, not a consultant's, the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, has publicly stated his view that the Bill is no longer necessary and proposed a dramatically restrictive so-called access programme under which access to medicinal cannabis for Vera Twomey's daughter Ava cannot even be given. Vera is now outside Leinster House and planning to stay there because the Minister is trying to subvert the Bill that was passed by the House and stating publicly that he does not intend to support it.

Despite the fact he promised in front of me, Deputies Micheál Martin, Kelleher, Jonathan O'Brien and Gino Kenny, a number of weeks ago that he would meet Vera Twomey two weeks after that meeting, he now refuses to take her phone calls, refuses to respond to her communications and has refused to give her that meeting.

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