Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In politics, when the answer is more gardaí, sometimes it does not matter what the question is. It has been an evergreen answer for politicians over the years. Sometimes it is the right answer. With organised crime, murder, public order, cybercrime, and burglaries then yes, we need to resource the Garda. In the case of a drugs policy and tackling people with problematic addiction, more gardaí is not the answer. In this motion and led by Deputy Ó Ríordáin, we are trying to move this conversation, along with others, as Deputy Ó Ríordáin has said, to build a tribe and build a group that will push this to where it needs to be, that is, as a health-led approach to harm reduction and recovery. The justice-led and Garda-led approach has failed and is failing. The statistics are there to prove it, in that 70% of all drugs cases before our courts are for the personal use of drugs. How many times have we as politicians, particularly in recent years, discussed the logjams in our Courts Service as all of these things need to go through our courts, when 70% of drugs cases are for personal use?

Beyond that, this is about dignity. It is about providing dignity to the individual, to the person who is suffering, to the person who is in need. Yesterday, I was driving in here at about 9:30 a.m. and I was stuck in traffic in the city. My eye was drawn to a Garda car that was pulled over to the side of the street. One garda was in the car and one was out of the car and searching an individual. I do not know the back story but I would make a judgment call, based on what I saw, that the individual had problematic drug use. Given my mind was in preparation for this debate today, what I saw spoke to one thing, which was the indignity with which that young man was treated. He was being searched and he was being patted down with his arms out. He had no bags or anything with him and he was wearing a tracksuit. When it got down to the mid-section of this young man, the garda pulled the young man's trousers down to his knees to search in and around his boxer shorts area. This was a busy street, in massive traffic, in full view of me and I do not know how many others. The traffic moved on, I moved on, and I do not know what the outcome was. I know one thing. That Individual was not best served by what happened to him on the side of that busy road yesterday morning. This is happening thousands of times. Nothing was done and nothing is being done to assist that individual in terms of that interaction yesterday. All that was done to that individual was the stripping of his dignity and criminalising him. Unless we get this conversation right, and unless we build on this and move on it, a lot of people would have looked at that incident yesterday and probably thought "Well good enough for him and that is how we need to tackle it - with more gardaí". This is what we need to try to move on from. This is why we need the health-led approach, the resources and the facilities. All of the evidence is there. We do not need to build the evidence. We know the models that have been successful, including the Portuguese model. Ireland's policy on this is failing and we do not need any more "Prime Time" documentaries on it. We just need to listen to the people on the front line. We need to go within our own selves and ask how we want fellow citizens to be treated. These are our family and our friends. There but for the grace of God, that could be my son, my brother or my best friend. That could be them. Drug addiction can hit anyone. It can strip away everything in a person's life and leave that person so vulnerable. We as a society are failing in this regard. We are failing in our drugs policy, we are failing communities and we are failing individuals who are on the front line.

I ask the Minister of State to please not dismiss this. Let us put energy into the citizens' assembly. Let us put resources into it. Let us change policy and let us change it here. There are people on all sides who support this. This motion has cross-party support. Let us push it through. I commend Deputy Ó Ríordáin on leading on this on behalf of the Labour Party and we look forward to working with people to bring this further.

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