Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I used to be a sceptic of citizens' assemblies, but over the past five or ten years I have become a fan of them. They can be really effective. We do not always accept the recommendations, nor do we have to, but we always consider them. When you put in front of 100 citizens all of the evidence, all the experts and all the advice, sometimes they come up with very good recommendations. As I say, we do not always accept them although we often do. We are the Legislature. We are the ones who actually make the decisions in the end and that should never change. We will have to give careful consideration to any kind of legal change. That is our job. That is going to take a bit of work and a bit of advice. I have asked the Garda about this on a number of occasions and they say to me that they rarely prosecute people for possession. Where they do prosecute people for possession, it is because they suspect they have been doing more than possession - that they have been dealing, promoting or selling - but that is the charge they can get them on. There are complexities like that that we need to figure out. Tomorrow we will set out how we best think this report can be taken forward.

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