Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also thank Deputy Gino Kenny for bringing forward this Bill. I know I have said this before, but it needs to be said again and again that the so-called war on drugs has failed utterly to achieve its objectives and has caused untold damage to our communities. How do we know? It is because we see it on our streets and in our communities, pubs and clubs. In fact, pretty much anywhere we go there are signs of drugs use. I am not talking about the most devastating, destructive and abused drug in our country, the legal drug of alcohol. I note the earlier comments about the attempt to criminalise that many years ago.

I am disappointed the Government has decided to kick the can further down the road. We need to move forward now and debate, discuss, and tease out what it means and how this approach actually impacts on our communities on the ground. I look forward to that debate. I also look forward to a radical change in our approach to the use of drugs in this State. There are things that we can do now to support our communities. We can put the community back in its rightful place as a core member of the drugs strategy and end the isolation of the community sector in the national drugs strategy. We can ensure that those delivering the health-led services are fully resourced to deal with problematic drug use. Many of those projects on the front line have still not recovered from the devastating effects of the cuts during the austerity years. We can resource our mental health services for people with mental health issues. I have no doubt that the increased potency of weed that is being sold to very young people is having a serious effect on their mental health.

We believe that while we have some specific concerns, as outlined by Deputy Daly, the Bill should be allowed to proceed to allow the committee to give it further scrutiny. The time for discussing the Bill is now. As we saw in the debates in the citizens' assembly, there is very strong support for a different approach that is health-led, and a change in legislation on how we deal with people and the fact that they are criminalised and jailed for the possession of a relatively small amount of drugs. I urge the Government to change its opinion on this and to allow the Bill to move forward so that we can deal with the issue as a country and in communities in a proper way.

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