Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

-----on this issue, which is in favour of change.

I note the comments of the Fianna Fáil representative, in particular, asking Solidarity-PBP to accept that the Bill is deeply flawed. I do not accept that this Bill is deeply flawed nor do I believe it is perfect. I believe amendments could improve it. It is fundamentally sound and it is not deeply flawed. If that is a signal on the part of the Fianna Fáil Party that it intends to gut this Bill on Committee Stage and achieve on Committee Stage what the party was unable to do today, we will fight it all the way on that.

A more accurate assessment of the Bill and its so-called flaws was published in the Irish Examinerby Fergus Finlay, who wrote that this is "an excellent piece of work which needs to be tightened up in some respects". That is fair and balanced. He wrote that "what happened to Mr Kenny's Bill on medicinal cannabis was another example of extremely poor parliamentary work [he was not referring to Deputy Gino Kenny here], that actually failed to protect the public interest." That was a criticism, by the way, of the Joint Committee on Health, and Mr. Finlay was correct in that regard.

The Minister talks about having an approach based on medical opinion and not that based on politicians' opinion. I am all for that. The proposal the Minister puts forward of having a regulatory system which allows for the prescription of medicinal cannabis for those with epilepsy, MS and suffering nausea post-chemotherapy is far too limited. The most wide-ranging, authoritative and comprehensive study into this was the study conducted around the Barnes report in the UK. Barnes's recommendation was medicinal cannabis for the management of chronic pain. That is far broader than the three limited examples given by the Minister.

At its annual conference, the Irish Medical Organisation representing GPs showed itself to be open to the idea that in the event of legalisation, one would have prescription by GPs, and that is the way it should be. It is GPs who have the relationship with the patients who are suffering - a far more progressive approach than the approach of the Government.

I would say to the people in the Public Gallery to keep the pressure up on this issue. Do not place any trust-----

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