Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)

-----often when it was not popular to be talking about it.

As a proud TD for Dublin Central and the communities of Dublin Central, it is unconscionable to me that we have people dying in our streets and in our communities from drugs overdoses and that Ireland has one of the highest number of drug-induced deaths when compared with every other country across the European Union. To me, it is the antithesis of our Republic and our values to respect the dignity of every individual that people are shamed and stigmatised into not seeking and getting the help and support they need. Addiction must be recognised for what it is - not a criminal justice problem, but a social and health need. This is not some perceived stigma. It is very real. It is real when mothers with an addiction go to ground and hide away for fear that their children will be taken away from them; it is real when we hear from young people of their fears of lifelong convictions if they seek help; it is real when people across the greater Leinster area have to travel to Dublin for opiate stabilisation programmes provided by a small number of GPs, and indeed that happens right across the country; and it is real when I look at the people in my community and the communities across Dublin Central - across Dublin 1, 3, 7 and 9 - who have been ravaged for years by deprivation, poverty and trauma and who see no hope, no future and no opportunity.

That is why we are passionate about introducing a comprehensive health-led approach for drug use in this country, and that is why we feel so strongly that decriminalisation of the drug user has to be a crucial part of that process. The powerful work of the citizens' assembly made clear that decriminalisation was one of three parts in moving to a comprehensive health-led approach alongside health diversion and dissuasive sanctions. My question to Minister of State and Government this morning is: is this Government committed to decriminalisation of the drug user? Is it committed to implementing the full intent of the citizens' assembly report to this Oireachtas? To date, it is not clear that it is. As Mr. Paul Reid powerfully told us last year when he appeared before our Oireachtas joint committee on drugs reform, the members of the citizens' assembly were stunned by the length of time it has taken to introduce the most modest of changes to drug policy, and that commitments made back in 2017 - almost a decade ago - on a health diversion approach are still not implemented.

Now, in 2025, we have those clear recommendations from the citizens' assembly. We have detailed recommendations from the Oireachtas joint committee on drugs reform, of which I was privileged to be part in the previous Oireachtas, yet we see them effectively ignored in the programme for Government. There is not a single mention of decriminalisation. All this year, we have been hearing that we are finally going to get a health diversion scheme but we still have no detail and, crucially, we have no clear sense of whether decriminalisation is part of a future plan. We need the Minister of State to be straight with us because if the health diversion approach is as far as this Government is preparing to go, then she needs to tell us. She needs to tell everybody in the Gallery, and she needs to make it known because there is an expectation that decriminalisation should and must happen in this country. I want to say to her that I do not believe a health diversion approach will work. The citizens’ assembly clearly rejected that approach. We know from the experience of Portugal and many other countries that a halfway house will not work because as long as gardaí remain involved in stop-and-search operations and spending precious Garda hours prosecuting personal possession in actions that are corrosive to building good community relations, we will make no progress towards a comprehensive health-led approach.

I would like now for us to be in a conversation about how we do decriminalisation in Ireland. How do we make it work for individuals and for their communities? That is the work of the Oireachtas joint committee on drug reform that is currently meeting and that will report next June. However, everything that we have heard from Government this year makes me feel that we are going backwards, not forwards. The reality - the beauty for Ireland - is that there are so many lessons we can learn from the many countries that have adopted decriminalisation, from Portugal to Switzerland to Vancouver and the failures in Canada as to what worked well and what did not. We know from the work of the previous Oireachtas joint committee and from the current work, and we need to build on that, that there should be no legal limit for personal possession. To introduce one would be to undermine the very process of taking away the judgment, profiling and targeting of those who use drugs.

Decriminalisation has to be accompanied by a dramatic increase in investment into services. Our public spaces must remain public and safe for everyone to use. We do not accept that large groups should be consuming alcohol in public and the same should apply to drugs. I am very conscious that there are so many residents in this city and in communities across the country who are dealing with the impact of dealing on their doorsteps, drug consumption in back lanes and on our streets and all that goes with that. The thing is, however, that those buying and consuming are also suffering a huge shortage of dignity and a lack of safety. That is why we have to have the safe injection centre in Merchants Quay made permanent. That is why we need to have safe consumption centres rolled out in Cork, Limerick and all those other major urban areas. The reality now, of course, is that drug consumption is no longer predominantly about injecting; it is about smoking, and we need to incorporate safe smoking facilities in the future.

We know Merchants Quay saved something like 65 lives in the first six months of this year. That is life-changing to those individuals and that needs to be rolled out across the country.

In just over a year, we will be marking 30 years since the establishment of the drug and alcohol task forces in this country, a groundbreaking initiative introduced by then Minister, Pat Rabbitte. They have been the backbone of organising service provision and identifying local need in that time. I am proud to be a member of the north inner city drug and alcohol task force, under the great work of Dr. Austin O'Carroll and Brian O'Reilly. However, it is important to say there are very serious concerns about the Department's attitude to the task forces and the groups working at the coalface, a cut in the most recent budget to the task forces and the exclusion of organisations from the steering group on the new national drugs strategy. That is not how it should be done.

To its credit, the Department has recognised the need for investment. It is wonderful that it backed the need for the addiction treatment facility in Usher's Island to be built last year and that €37 million of taxpayers' money went into this wonderful 100-bed facility. However, it is unconscionable and shameful that this Government is leaving 37 beds empty this winter for the sake of a small amount of money that could save lives. I ask the Minister of State to make that direct intervention to ensure the Simon Community facility on Usher's Island, which helps those in addiction and who are homeless, get the care and services they need.

To the future, we know what a health approach looks like. We need to make sure that naloxone is available across our communities and that families and pharmacists can easily and readily administer it. We need to make sure testing is widely available. At music festivals during the summer, we saw the HSE promote that, and that was wonderful, but we need to ensure that is much more widely available. In Paris and in other cities across Europe, people can walk in with their drugs - they do not know the potency of them - and get them tested. We know we need to have much greater investment into harm reduction and recovery.

I pay tribute to the incredible work being done in the communities in my constituency and across the country, to SAIL, which is celebrating 30 years of its existence this morning, and to the other organisations that work day in, day out for those who use drugs and who are in addiction. They are often not properly recognised and do not get the resources they need. They need to be supported to ensure those who need help get it.

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