John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her response, but I regret I do not agree with her. I think we do need a national campaign. In her initial response, the Minister of State spoke about a number of individual campaigns, including the music festival campaign and the schools campaigns. They are fine but we need a co-ordinated national programme. Not everybody who is involved in taking illicit drugs is in education or school. Many people are recreational or casual users and they are not caught with those campaigns.

To be fair to the drug task forces, the level of funding they are receiving now in comparison with what they received a decade or more ago is not sufficient to run extensive, robust, educational awareness campaigns. The drugs task force in my area originally catered for a population of approximately 30,000. It is now catering for a population of over 100,000 people. This is not practical or feasible at the current level of funding. I acknowledge that the task forces are getting an additional €20,000 this year but that is not sufficient. Given the number of drug-related deaths, the increase in prevalence, the evidence of on-street drug dealing and the seizures by An Garda Síochána, in addition to the work being done by the drugs task forces and the initiatives under the national drugs strategy, we need a national educational awareness campaign. We need this campaign, not in replacement of existing initiatives but in addition to them.

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