Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Ó Ríordáin and the Labour Party on bringing forward this motion. We can all agree that there is an exceptionally serious issue with drug use and its links to organised crime throughout Ireland. Some people will seek a numbness to whatever trauma they have in their minds, and quite often the only way they can get that is through the use or misuse of drugs.

I read through some of the recent European drug report, which stated that Ireland has the EU's joint highest rate of drug-induced deaths among those aged 16 to 64. We certainly cannot be proud of that as a society. The report indicated that there is growing use of crack cocaine throughout the city of Dublin, particularly, and in many other areas. The national drugs strategy has provided a deliverable pathway forward to secure people out of drug misuse, but the Government has failed to implement the policy and failed to fund it properly.

The thrust of the motion before us relates to the securing of a timeline for a citizens' assembly on drug use, and that is to be welcomed, but it cannot and should not be spoken about in a vacuum. We see in our communities every day people who have sought comfort from trauma in the use of prescription drugs and illicit drugs alike. As one of my colleagues said yesterday, this is the only coping mechanism some people in addiction have because mental health services, unfortunately, are simply not available for many people and they turn to illicit drugs.

The option of the Portuguese model, which has been considered and talked about for many years as a way forward, needs to be considered further. At the same time, we all also recognise the huge harm the drug gangs have done to communities throughout the country, the blight they are on communities and the terrible devastation they bring. I have spoken to parents and grandparents who have been threatened because of young people's drug debts. That is a trauma in their lives as they look at young people with hope, vision and ambition before them reduced to nothing because of their addiction to drugs. Someone once described it to me as suicide in slow motion. That is a very good image. If any of us were to meet a suicidal person, we would immediately recognise the need to intervene and to do something for that person, yet very often all sorts of very difficult and wrong language is used about people who are addicts.

I will outline Sinn Féin's stance on the citizens' assembly. We are supportive of a citizens' assembly on drugs. It is something we have called for in the past. We have also supported the introduction of the medicinal cannabis compassionate access programme because we want those patients who can safely benefit from cannabis-based treatments to do so. Our most recent alternative budget pledged €45.2 million for addiction and recovery service provision. That is over ten times the total amount the Government proposed, €4 million, to enhance the service. Harm reduction and prevention have always been and will continue to be Sinn Féin's principles in our development of future drug and alcohol strategies.

Part of the harm reduction approach will be to tackle organised crime directly, not the vulnerable foot soldiers, often addicts themselves, who are used by unscrupulous drug barons. Criminalising addicts is not the way to tackle organised crime. I hope the Government, when it introduces a timeline for the citizens' assembly, will take all these factors into account and recognise and accept that while there is a criminal element to the problem we have to deal with, many people who are addicts are often themselves involved in feeding their habits by selling drugs and are sucked into that criminal underworld. We have to recognise that the first thing they are is an addict and treat that first and then deal with the rest of it. Citizens' assemblies are one of the best ways we have developed over the past decade or more to deal with complex and divisive issues, to bring experts in and to get the opinions of people who are at the coalface and who can deal with the issue at hand. It is to be hoped we can come out of that with a solution which will serve well not just the general public but also addicts and future generations. We cannot continue this notion of a war on the supply side of drugs, which is what it is. It is only on the supply side. We need a war on the demand side. We need to reduce demand by having appropriate services in place for people who are vulnerable and people who could possibly in the future fall into the traps of drug addiction, as so many have done in the past.

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