Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Curran, for bringing forward this Private Members' motion and affording me the opportunity to speak on it. I listened with great interest to the Minister of State's speech and I will read the rest of it later on. The Minister of State is well intentioned but, unfortunately, her party has abandoned her on this. In abandoning the Minister of State, they have abandoned the parents and children of the country.

In my speech, I will focus on three little parts. The first is my own personal experience of two weeks ago in Loughrea when I dropped my child off to a disco. What I experienced in relation to drugs and alcohol on the streets of Loughrea between 8.30 p.m. and midnight was unforgiving. Those children were exposed to alcohol and drugs and they were all under 16 years of age. The fear that parents have in this day and age is unbelievable and we do not feel that we are supported.

Mr. Joe Treacy from the HSE spoke last week on the Ivan Yates show. He was asked about drugs in the west of Ireland and he said that we have a blizzard in Galway. He also spoke about the fact that we do not look at dual addiction. Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan addressed that earlier on. Normally when people present, be it with alcohol or drug addiction, there are other underlying issues and those are mental health issues. Unfortunately, we do not resource the HSE to address both of those aspects of it.

As a member of a joint policing committee, my view is we do not have enough gardaí on the ground. We need to have more community policing to assist. All the funds the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, is investing are no good unless we have the boots on the ground to address it. We also need to have social workers going into the schools because there must be a three-pronged approach on this. There must be the gardaí and social workers and we must have the addiction services. If we can combine all that together and support the parents, we might have a healthier future.

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