Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do not know which genius thought this one up but this is the last thing that anyone who knows anything about the drugs task forces, the national drugs strategy and community involvement in drugs services would dream up. Communities have been central to the partnership and the framework of trying to tackle the problem within them. They are the experts in many ways. It is a pity that Departments, Ministers and so on sometimes dream up changes to things that are working. If it is not broken, do not fix it, especially where communities are involved. It took a lot of time to win the communities' trust. I was there during the time of Concerned Parents Against Drugs and the Coalition of Communities Against Drugs, COCAD, when communities had considerable mistrust of the system as they saw it - the Garda, the then health boards, Ministers and so on. Communities bought into the partnership approach. They saw it as an opportunity to frame national policy on an issue that was affecting them directly as communities, mothers, fathers or people who were addicted to drugs. They were able to inform that policy instead of having a policy that was dreamed up somewhere else being imposed on them.

It is sad that the situation has come to this and that there is an "uncivil" row, as it were. I do not know where the title "civil society forum" comes from. It would usually be "civic". We need to consider what the likes of Mr. Fergus McCabe fought for. It was not to be excluded or sidelined. Rather, it was to be central to all of the strategy around drugs.

See this speech in context