Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

First, I am taken aback by Deputy Gould's comments. The north-east inner city initiative has not been going at a glacial pace. It has been very effective. I think that is widely acknowledged. I was recently at the restoration of Fitzgibbon Street Garda station and saw the community room in the station. There has been tremendous focus in the north-east inner city initiative. This year, €7.5 million will be allocated to it. He did make points on the broader issue around task forces more generally. Yesterday, at the Cabinet meeting on social affairs, I was pursuing an initiative with the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, that we would endeavour to reinvigorate local area partnerships and responses to create proper co-ordination but also an approach from the bottom up that would use and leverage from existing agencies, from Tusla to ETBs and the health service, to ensure that we can deal with addiction issues on the ground in many communities across the city and the country. We are progressing that proposal. We are making progress on that. Some significant work has been done in my Department on this initiative. An assistant secretary is overseeing and co-ordinating across all Departments an initiative and endeavouring to identify the 11 or 12 key areas of the country that need sustained, high-level attention on multiple issues including addiction and community development, education, school completion and many others. We are pursuing that broader issue.

The north-east inner city initiative does give us an interesting model of what works. For example, there was an external chair who was not involved in any particular stakeholder group who chaired that initiative. That has worked well. There have been significant initiatives coming out of it in investment and physical infrastructure, community facilities and so on.

On the broader issue which Deputy Bacik raised, I am willing to engage with her and Deputy Ó Riordáin on the injection facilities. My understanding was that there was opposition to planning and issues around planning.

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