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

That is alright. First, I would like to thank my colleagues. We all accept that we need something to deal with the coercion of minors and the facts of grooming by drugs gangs of very young kids. In some cases these are very vulnerable kids who are at the periphery of society. We all know that these drugs gangs do this from a point of view of protecting themselves and of having a buffer between themselves and the breaking of the law.

I accept some of what the Minister of State says regarding certain legal issues, but we need to see, for the want of a better term, the “colour of your money” in relation to that legislation. It is accepted this is something that we have not dealt with sufficiently and that is accepting the huge difficulty we have in dealing with the overall drug problem. This will be the third time this week that I say on the floor of the Dáil that the war on drugs has been well and truly lost. The Minister of State may even have heard that previously from me. That is where we are at.

We know about the huge amounts of drug use and drug addiction and we know about the huge number of communities that are under severe pressure at this point in time. They have been so for a considerable amount of time. We know that families are pressurised by these gangs. We have to look at a way and a means of dealing with this. We also have to do it while accepting the reality of the world we live in, in which there is a huge amount of drug taking. We are not stopping what is coming in from Afghanistan or Colombia. We certainly are not stopping what might start as legal drugs, and I know there may be some certain question marks regarding opioids and all sorts of drugs. We know that the place is awash with benzos and we have to deal with that reality. We have to deal with the reality in many cases.

What I believed was a drug dealer 20 years ago probably was not much of a drug dealer. Whereas one could name ten or 20 in a town, now one could easily name 200 or 300. In some cases, people fall into it for a short period of time and get out. There are many sad cases but the saddest cases of all are the ones where people have lost their lives, where families have been impacted and beyond that. We have all dealt with families that have had the knock on the door. We all know of the debt that starts with €300 or €400 and then jumps to €800, €1,200 to €15,000 to all sorts of crazy figures. On some level, as a business model, it is perfect and it works a hell of a lot better than actually selling drugs. They just keep multiplying the debt, and it is utterly unsustainable. Unfortunately, when they discover a family, which with the best of intentions wants to actually pay this debt, they think that they can get through the gap, but all that they are telling the dealer is that the tap is open and they will keep coming back.

We need the citizens’ assembly as soon as possible. I would like to think that the citizens can be braver and courageous, maybe more so than we are in here. There is a definite need for that. We need to look at novel approaches. I do not think we can continue with the way we are going at this point in time. I do not think it will work in any way, shape or form. I am fed up that most of the time when I am dealing with An Garda Síochána it is regarding issues surrounding drugs and drug debt intimidation. I have been highly impressed by a number of cases where gardaí have gone above and beyond in dealing with these particular sets of circumstances. We are all aware of what happened in Drogheda, where drugs gangs put it up to the State and to a degree the State gave them the answer and we would like to see that across the board.

In some cases, we are dealing with really clever drug dealers. I have seen drug dealers in Dundalk in my hometown who have been very careful in who they target and the houses they burn. We deal with people who will probably have come to the attention of An Garda Síochána for other reasons. I have even seen instances where some of the most impoverished people I know have had their houses burnt. These are council houses. I say to myself that there is no way this guy thinks he can get money out of them, but it is not about them. It is about the next person who will get the knock on the door, so that they will know what is coming.

I am very glad that we now have what we did not have a number of years ago, that is, drug squads up and running to tackle this issue. We will never have enough resources to deal with it. We cannot possibly out-police the problems we have at this point. We have to concentrate absolutely on those dangerous drugs gangs and those people who put great pressure on families. We have to deal incredibly harshly with those who use kids and vulnerable people. It is not only children. We have also seen cases of local drug dealers deciding to use the houses of people with other difficulties as their front end or even going beyond that. Any kid can fall into this. Some of the best kids I know have found themselves in bad circumstances. However, there are also kids who are targeted on the basis that they are on the periphery. We need to put serious effort into family and community supports long before we deal with the Garda diversionary projects and the youth justice strategy the Minister of State spoke about, which are necessary. We have to deal with families and communities at a far earlier stage. Otherwise, this will continue. We definitely need a citizens' assembly and I hope for something more novel.

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