Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Shanahan. I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. This is my first opportunity since being elected to the Dáil to speak about drugs and the plight of those who have an addiction to drugs. There is more than one part to this issue but first, and most important, are the victims, young and old, who have succumbed to the use of drugs and been caught up in addiction. Their situation is terrible. For families in which a son, daughter, brother or sister has developed an addiction, whether to alcohol or drugs, it creates devastation within that family and the family network. Often, there is a feeling of helplessness in trying to deal with it and wondering how to advise because it is a very complicated issue, as other speakers noted.

Drug addiction is a killer and it is killing people in this country. What is more worrying is that it is becoming more common in modern times. When my children were in secondary school, they could tell me who was dealing drugs in their school and who was taking drugs. They had that knowledge. Thanks be to God they never got involved in that and nor did any other of my family members. Drugs are prevalent now everywhere in this country, including rural parishes, such as the one in which I live, towns and cities. Drug-taking is not confined to the big cities; it is widespread. There is a kind of general acceptability that this can happen.

The villains in all of this are the drug lords and others who sell the drugs and manipulate the minds of those who are addicted in order to make profit. There is something wrong when a young person can tell me who is dealing drugs today in Tuam or wherever. They can tell me how and where it is being done. There is frustration that the policing of all of this seems to be helpless in bringing these people to court. There is always an effort to target the supplier, but the reality is that there are a lot of people making a great deal of money out of the pain and misery of others. I wonder why that is.

We have a lot of people in jail at the moment, as Deputy Gino Kenny said. He said that about 80% of those in jail are there for drug-related offences, but the majority of them could be the victims of as opposed to the people who profit from drugs.

It is important that we look at how we are doing things. When you look back at the past four or five years, there has been a huge increase in drug taking. We need to increase the number of youth residential centres in the country. We do not have enough of them at present. There is a lack of dual diagnosis and a refusal to make dual diagnoses. You might have people who have depression or other illnesses who take to drugs as a solace. The sale of drugs is being done openly on the streets of our towns and villages, and there is something wrong with that. It is important to remember that babies are being born today who are addicted to drugs or alcohol because of their parents' addictions. We have a huge problem and it will take a lot of resolve it. We need to get going with it at this stage.

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