Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I understand the submission from Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign to the Citizens' Assembly on Drug Use makes a number of suggestions for key areas of action, including further investment in community development responses and the need to enhance the voice of communities in tackling deprivation and its links with drug abuse.

The Deputy will appreciate that some of the actions called for in Citywide’s submission are cross-governmental and go beyond the sole remit of my Department. What is clear throughout Citywide’s submission is the call for greater engagement with local voices across all aspects of the approach to tackling drug use and its impacts, particularly in communities experiencing marginalisation and deprivation. It is well established at this stage that drug use and its consequences impact more heavily on communities experiencing poverty.

I acknowledge the spirit of the submission: that the voices of those who know the consequences, who experience the impacts and who see the problems in their communities every day must be brought to the forefront of any conversation on tackling challenges relating to drugs use. We have seen the effects on communities when people are deprived of a voice. No one knows better what the specific challenges facing a community are than the people who live in it.

There is always more to be done, but my Department is proactive in progressing the sort of community development approach being called for in Citywide’s submission to the citizens' assembly.

Work is ongoing across a number of programmes and initiatives in my Department to provide supports and empowerment to communities experiencing poverty and deprivation, including the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, the place-based leadership programme, the community development pilot programme and the empowering communities programme. In recognition of its community development approach, my Department also provides funding to the Citywide Drug Crisis Campaign.

My officials also have regular engagement with the Department of Health regarding the national drugs strategy. My Department is represented on strategic implementation group 4, which comprises sectoral, agency and departmental officials.

The national drugs strategy is relevant to my Department's work in the community and voluntary sectors as it is vital in ensuring the collective input of the statutory, community and voluntary sectors, in order to provide a co-ordinated response to drug and alcohol use in Irish society.

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