Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

For 25 years, our national drugs strategy has been underpinned by a community development approach. In 1996, the then Minister, on behalf of the State, acknowledged to community leaders who had been campaigning on the drugs issue for years that the then Government had not listened. The Minister set up a partnership structure that included community representation as a right to ensure that would never happen again.

With the publication of the midterm review, it appears that the Department is attempting to bring that partnership to an end. In the review document, the Department is effectively writing the community sector out of the national drugs strategy. It is altering the definition of "community" to remove the engagement with the wider community and has set out proposals for new structures that would remove the community networks that represent their sectors as core constituents of the strategy. There is no evidence base for the proposed changes to the structures, and adequate time and space have not been allowed for the networks to consider them. A brake has been put on the process, though. The national oversight committee was supposed to meet on Friday but the Minister has agreed that the Department will hold further discussions with the community sector.

The community sector has noticed that something is going on within the drug strategy. It is either a political decision, a HSE-driven decision or a Civil Service decision to try to take the community out of "community". I do not support that and I hope to hear a positive response from the Minister of State to the effect that the community will be part of the structure and will be listened to within it.

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