Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a very appropriate debate at this time. The title of the debate, referring to organised crime, clearly indicates the disorganisation of society. Many of the organised criminal gangs to which we now refer regularly have larger budgets than some small countries. They do not count their wealth anymore in hundreds of thousands or millions of euro but in billions of euro, and that is a clear indication as to where we are going.

A common thread runs through this entire issue, namely, drugs. The drugs issue has to be dealt with, yet we are incapable as a society of dealing with it. The longer it goes on, the worse it gets and the more powerful these gangs become. I listened with interest to Deputy Ó Ríordáin's contribution regarding his experiences and what he said is correct, but we have different attitudes to how the problem should be dealt with. I believe there is no sense in appeasing the drugs issue. It is going to go on and on. The late Tony Gregory, for many years a Member of this House, went to great lengths to discommode the drug barons but they prevailed, despite the fact he stoically went against them again and again. He put forward various proposals, all of which were designed to curtail the activities of the drug barons. The problem is the drugs trade is lucrative, and because it is lucrative, it is attractive. It affects every young person in the country, from primary school and second level to university and society in general. That is a sad state of affairs but that is the way it is.

A former mayor of New York City claimed responsibility through zero tolerance for bringing the issue to a halt in the United States. In fact, it was not him at all but his predecessor, Mayor Koch, who clearly put the perpetrators behind bars. He took the people who were making the most profits, the known leaders of the industry, and put them all, collectively and selectively, behind bars in a place from which they could no longer operate. There are those who to this day tell us it does not work that way and that we have to do it at a different level and look at it differently, but we do not. We have to look at it straight on, head first and up close and personal. We have to deal with it and put the drug barons out of business because their influence and the degree to which they continue to influence young people is massive and growing. We are only just short of selecting people to run for public office on behalf of drug barons to perpetuate their case. It is an extraordinary situation to be in.

We cannot continue as we are. There are those who say we should have a greater emphasis on a medical response, and that is true. We need to respond to that issue in a way that is serious, meaningful and compassionate and it has to be done that way, but it should not be done in the way methadone treatment was. I recall attending a meeting of a ministerial drugs committee many years ago. We found out that one part of the community in the drugs industry felt as though methadone was an opportunity to get more drugs and to top them up illegally. That is going to continue, no matter what we do about it, as long as we accept that drugs have any place in our society. At the same time, we have to accept the fact irreparable damage is being done to young people.

I return to the point I made about the examples being set for young people. They see the emergence of drug barons who get more and more powerful and become more and more influential. They see situations where they seem to prosper, whereby if you want to be influential in society, this is the guy to look up to. They look at the 4x4 he drives, but they never look at the situation as it affects individual households, where families are torn apart by the activities and profits of the drug barons. Those profits will continue unless we cut off the supply, so we need to spend more time and devote more gardaí and traditional security methods to cut off that supply. Ours is an island nation, for God's sake; nobody can walk over a border.

To those who say those approaches do not work, they do. To return to the late Tony Gregory, in his company we examined the Zurich experiment, the Amsterdam experiment, the Italian experiment and all the various other experiments, which have now fallen into disarray. They failed because the supply was never interrupted. As long as that power and supply continues, the major drug barons will continue to operate to the detriment of society and young families throughout the country.

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