Michael Harty (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am in a very difficult position, as I was when the debate was conducted on 1 December last year. At the time I saw fundamental flaws in the Bill and I was the only person in the Chamber that night to speak against it. I spoke on it from a position of genuinely held medical views, which I still hold. I am also here as the Chairman of the health committee, which is proposing the motion that the Bill should not proceed to Committee Stage. On that committee there were three Fianna Fáil members, three Fine Gael members, a member of the Labour Party, a member of Sinn Féin and three Independents. The recommendation that the Bill should not proceed to Committee Stage was reached without dissent.

It would appear today that is not the case and I find it very difficult to speak on a motion when those who did not dissent are now dissenting. Such is politics. I have learned much about politics from working on this cannabis Bill.

I believe the committee had fair hearings. I do not believe that anybody was badly treated at the committee. Many Members, who were not members of the committee, contributed. I do not accept that there was any bias. I chaired the meetings in a fair and unbiased manner. There were some robust exchanges and asked particular questions. By analysing the contributions of all those who spoke at the meetings, and we had four meetings on medicinal cannabis, we came to our unanimous conclusion.

It was the intention of the committee, and it is my intention as chair, to see medicinal cannabis products being available to patients. I met Ms Vera Twomey in the audiovisual, AV, room in June 2016 and promised her that I would bring the issue before the Joint Committee on Health, which I did on 24 November last. I know that she was bitterly disappointed in me when I told her on 1 December that I was going to oppose this Bill. It upset her greatly. However, my intention, and the intention of the committee, is to provide medicinal grade cannabinoid products to treat people who have conditions which will respond to it. That is still the intention of the committee. The committee rejected the Bill because we found that it was substantially flawed and was not going to progress the provision of medical grade cannabinoids for patients. I would love it if that was possible in the future, but we had to deal with the Bill, and our conclusion was that it should not proceed to Committee Stage.

The Bill was very poorly worded. It is telling that many sections of the Bill were taken from the Luke 'Ming' Flanagan Bill of 2013, which proposed the introduction of recreational cannabis as well as medicinal cannabis. Many of the sections of the Bill were taken from that previous Bill and were not cleaned up properly. Both the committee and I found many references unacceptable. It referred to recreational use, it referred to consumers rather than patients, it referred to selling cannabis rather than dispensing it and it referred to certification by a doctor rather than prescribing by a doctor, and there is a fundamental difference between a doctor issuing a certificate and a doctor writing a prescription because a prescription has a legal status whereas a certificate has no status, or certainly substantially less status. The Bill proposes making available whole plant cannabis products. Included in that is a provision to sell cannabis by weight, which of course implies that cannabis is for smoking. It also proposes that cannabis should be sold in plain packaging so that it would not be advertised. A further proposal is for a ban on smoking cannabis in the workplace, which I found quite extraordinary. It implies that cannabis could be smoked legally outside the workplace. Indeed, in section 44 of the Bill it defined cannabis as something that could be smoked.

Those were the flaws that I could see. The more one reads the Bill the more flaws become apparent. That was the substantial reason the committee did not recommend that this Bill should proceed. It certainly did not want to indicate that it did not support the provision of medicinal cannabinoid products, either on their own or in combination, which would treat illness. That is the aim of the committee.

The study conducted by Mr. Mike Barnes was referenced widely in the Bill. One of the issues that the proposers of the Bill had was that the HPRA did not reference pain as an illness or a condition for which medicinal cannabis should be produced. There are only four studies in the study from Mr. Barnes which deal with smoking cannabis. None of those four studies reached a level that Mr. Barnes had set for good evidence that medicinal cannabis dealt with pain. Those studies were class two and three studies, and the bar Mr. Barnes set for good evidence was not reached by those four studies. That is not to say that smoking cannabis could not relieve pain, but in his own investigations the studies on smoked cannabis did not reach the level at which it could be called good evidence. The products that Mr. Barnes referenced as having good evidence for pain relief were pure cannaboid products, and he named those four products which he accepted relieved pain. However, smoking cannabis did not reach that level.

The content of this Bill relates to smoking cannabis, and that was the main objection the committee had on the Bill. Smoking cannabis has serious health effects. It can precipitate psychosis, particularly if smoked by young adolescents or young adults. It can trigger a psychotic illness. I have patients who have had psychosis triggered by smoking cannabis. I have come across patients who have been demotivated, and their lives changed completely, by smoking cannabis. There is a 9% dependency rate if one smokes cannabis on a regular basis. They are the issues that I feel are unacceptable in this Bill.

I have to reiterate that the committee is committed to providing medicinal cannabis that is safe and effective and has data to back it up. We could not accept the Bill in the manner in which it was drafted. The Government made the excellent suggestion that this Bill be redrafted rather than amended. The committee felt that it would be so difficult to amend this Bill that it would be practically impossible. We are now going to be given the task of amending the Bill, and I feel it is going to be very difficult to amend it. I suggest that redrafting may be a better course of action than amending.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I am standing alone on this side of the House again. It is a very uncomfortable position to be in. I hope people understand that as Chairman of this committee I cannot go against its recommendation, so I will be voting that the Bill should not proceed to Committee Stage.

See this speech in context