Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also reiterate that we really need a date for the citizens’ assembly on drugs. We can all accept at this stage that the so-called war on drugs is well and truly lost. We know that we have communities which are completely under the cosh of criminal elements and that we do not have the addiction services that are required to deal with the need that is there. Most of my dealings with An Garda Síochána are generally related to drug debt intimidation at this point in time where families are under severe pressure. We know that this issue needs to be health-led, there is a policing element and there is an education element.

We know that we also need community and family supports which are absolutely lacking. We have to deal with the issues right through from multigenerational trauma to poverty but we are not doing any of these. We need to hope that our citizens will have more courage, perhaps, than all of us and will be able to look at these particular issues, but it is already too late. The best we can do is to set a timeline where we can actually get underway with this. We may have lost some people but we need to ensure that we save more of our citizens from the absolute disaster that the drug trade has introduced across Ireland and the world. We need a solution on an Irish, an all-island, on a European basis and even beyond.

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