Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that the Government will not oppose this Bill. I acknowledge that the Minister has issues with some of the ways the legislation is laid out, but this is why we have pre-legislative scrutiny; it is there to iron all of this out. As the Opposition, we do not have the services of the Attorney General. We would love to have the services of the Attorney General when drafting legislation. Maybe in the coming years we will have the opportunity ourselves over this side of the House to have that service.

I acknowledge also that the Government will bring forward legislation, which is also welcome, but we want to see it as soon as possible. I hope the commitment to published it by the end of 2022 is met.

As well as legislation, we need to have the resources in our communities so we can combat this issue to begin with. Deputy Paul Donnelly referred to smaller classrooms in DEIS areas and other areas. We also need to make sure that we fully resource our drug and alcohol task forces. I was a director of the Clondalkin drug and alcohol task force for many years. Earlier we talked about crack cocaine. There were so many times we had chances to be reactive in our community. When we saw an emerging need in our community, for example, and wanted to put a policy or measures in place to deal with that, we could not because we did not have the resources. We need to make sure that we have the resources in place for our communities.

I thank all Deputies for a lively and heartening debate. Powerful contributions were made on this side of the House. These were honest and passionate contributions. It is exactly what is needed. I echo the calls for a citizens' assembly on drugs. It is time for an adult conversation. We talk about the language we use on a daily basis such as "getting out of the head". What does that mean? It means that people want to get out of the space that is going on in their head. They want to use an illicit substance. They want to do something that will take them away from themselves. That is what drug use does and that is what addiction does. It gives calm to that anxious inner world that is going on. It gives calm to the underlying reasons we spoke about of trauma poverty. That is what it does. We need to tackle the underlying reasons and issues.

I have worked in many drug services over the years. That was my background before I came into this Chamber. One of the places that stuck with me for years was one of the most challenging but also one of the most rewarding. It was a role I had when I was working with under 18-year-olds in an area of Dublin. I will not mention the specific area because I do not want to further stigmatise it. I welcomed Deputy Ó Ríordáin into the project when he was a Minister of State at the time with responsibility for the national drugs strategy. We were working with under 18s. If I had said to those young lads that they were vulnerable, they would go through me for a shortcut. That is the last thing they thought they were, but they were vulnerable. I saw these young lads and worked with them. I helplessly and hopelessly tried to help these young lads. I could see in front of my eyes how they were being enticed into criminality by older and more experienced drug dealers who told them, "Hold these drugs for us and whatever drugs the lads are using you will get your touch out of that." All of a sudden the local gardaí would get a call and these young kids would be the pawns among criminal kingmakers. They would let gardaí know that these kids had the drugs, maybe just to get themselves off the hook. That was well known right across Dublin. These young kids were out of school and they were not engaged in employment. They were not engaged in anything other than the drugs they were using and the drug dealers. We need to have resources in place so we can tackle that. I was an individual and on my own and working with these under 18s. That was my role. I was on my own trying to deal with these young lads. We saw some good outcomes but we also saw some not so good outcomes. Unfortunately, we lost some young people.

We need to examine the underlying issues that contribute towards making this lifestyle look attractive. Again, it is an escape. It is the calm in an anxious world. Getting out of the head is an escape from reality that these young people are in. Poverty and the lack of opportunities are always top of the list in any conversations I have, not only with young people but also with the services that are there to support them.

Reference is always made to intergenerational drug users. It is not about intergenerational drug use; it is about intergenerational poverty and trauma that we deal with on a daily basis. We need to target these young people before they end up in the hands of drug dealers. I have always believed that there is no such thing as a lost cause. I have worked with people right across the spectrum of drug use over the years. Some of them have had chaotic lifestyles, some were at the other end of the spectrum and had years of abstaining behind them, and everybody in between.

There is no such thing as a lost cause. We used to have to work on logic models and, to get the resources for the drugs task forces from the Minister, we had to do tick-box exercises and quantify what was a success. A success to me an awful lot of the time was when somebody turned up the next morning because, sometimes when they were leaving my service, I did not believe they would get through the night. It is hard to quantify that when filling out HSE forms, ticking boxes, working on logic models and all the hoops they make us jump through.

The child is vulnerable in this, as are the drug users. We need a more productive way of dealing with drug users. Directing them away from the Judiciary services and into healthcare and recovery services has to be the way forward. It was said at the start by other Deputies, probably a lot better than I am saying it, that the citizens' assembly on drugs is a way forward on that.

I thank everybody for their contributions. I acknowledge that the Government is not opposing this Bill and I hope it gets to the stage of legislative scrutiny. I look forward to seeing what the Government has proposed by the end of 2022.

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