Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Ríordáin and my erstwhile colleagues in the Labour Party for bringing forward a motion that, refreshingly for me, I can agree with so wholeheartedly. That is with one possible reservation, which is the reference to a citizens' assembly. It seems that there is an unusual degree of agreement in this Chamber. I understand that the Government is not bringing forward a countermotion. Why can we not just deal with the issue? Why do we have to have a citizens' assembly to prompt us to deal with every single difficult issue when we are essentially an assembly of citizens elected, for a finite period, to represent other citizens? Could we just deal with this issue? I do not think anybody would disagree with that. There might be disagreement as to how we deal with it, but it is something that we must deal with.

I had the benefit of studying law at University College Cork, UCC. I was taught jurisprudence by Tim Murphy, who was an excellent lecturer. He concentrated very much on contemporary schools of jurisprudence. From that perspective, he wrote a very short book that was published the year I left UCC. I obviously read his book, which informed my thinking very much from then on. It is called Rethinking the War on Drugs in Ireland and it was published in 1996. Ireland was a different place in 1996, as Deputy Paul Donnelly, outlined earlier. Inner-city communities were ravaged by drugs. However, the problem of drug abuse was pretty much contained in inner cities. The Henry scene - the party scene - was going in Cork and middle class students were taking drugs, but they were not being stigmatised in the way that people in poorer communities were, but drugs were beginning to move out into the broader community. Since then, I have seen many successes of the war on drugs: the Collopys, and the McCarthy-Dundons were just learning their trade on the streets of Limerick at that time. They went on to become major drug dealers. The Garda took them on and put them away. George "The Penguin" Mitchell was jailed. John Gilligan was jailed. The Kinahans are now on the run.

Has all of this led to the war on drugs being won? Are there no more drugs on our streets? No, there are far more drugs on our streets, and they are in every community in Ireland. They are in every village in Ireland now - Bodyke, Scariff - every town and village in Ireland now has a thriving drugs trade. I question the waste of Garda resources chasing these people. They are evil and the trade is very much in their hands, and they are making money out of it, but the answer is not to continue to chase them, it is to take the trade out of their hands, to legalise drugs and to deal with the fact that there is a huge and growing market for drugs. That is a health issue, and it must be dealt with in the same way that we deal with the appetite and demand for every other substance - cigarettes, alcohol, etc., instead of fighting a losing war, which we are very clearly losing, despite the best efforts of the Garda.

I commend Deputy Ó Ríordáin and the motion, but I would like to see action in the House.

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