Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. Decriminalisation of all drugs has been the policy of People Before Profit for very many years. We were delighted to see that this was finally adopted as a consensus cross-party position in the interim report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use, which was then chaired by Gino Kenny. The report was published last October. The interim report recommended that decriminalisation of possession for personal use should apply equally to all illicit drugs. Importantly, it also made clear that this should be done by repealing section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. In other words, we should adopt a de jure as opposed to merely de facto approach to decriminalisation to ensure we have a consistent application of the health-led approach that everyone in this House pays lip service to. I am doubtful about their actual commitment to it. The benefit of that is to remove the risk of discriminatory discretion being given to An Garda Síochána in respect of whether it prosecutes marginalised individuals or not.

That was the position. All the parties agreed to that position after discussion and after looking at the evidence. We then went into the general election where Fianna Fáil promised in its election manifesto to decriminalise drug possession for personal use, making no distinction between cannabis and other drugs, only to be then criticised by Fine Gael for effectively being soft on drugs, abandoning the position it had arrived at through a discussion based on evidence for cheap right-wing populism. Fine Gael said that it would continue to implement with An Garda Síochána a health-led approach for people in possession of drugs for personal use, criticising Fianna Fáil for its position on decriminalisation. Fianna Fáil then engaged in backsliding in the face of that criticism from Fine Gael, saying that when it wrote about decriminalising drug possession for personal use, it only meant decriminalisation of cannabis, which clearly makes no sense. It meant what it wrote, which was the agreed position of all the parties and is the evidence-based position, but backslid in the face of leaning into right-wing law-and-order populism by Fine Gael. There was backsliding in the general election that is reflected in the programme for Government, which makes no mention of decriminalisation and uses similar language to the Fine Gael manifesto saying it will commit to a health-led approach to drug addiction and divert those found in possession of drugs for personal use to health services.

In every debate on drugs in which I have been involved over the past number of years here, we see the words "health-led approach". They say it every time they speak about it but with no real content because the language could mean decriminalisation or it could mean - I suspect it does mean - continuing with the flawed health diversion approach where drug users can be diverted to health services the first two times they are caught in possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use but after that, they are dealt with under section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act and condemned to be another victim of the failed war on drugs.

"Three strikes and you're out" is a stupid approach to take to people suffering from drug addiction. The experience with addiction is that it can take far more than two or three attempts to get off drugs, particularly when addiction treatment and rehab services are so massively underfunded and massively oversubscribed that, in reality, they are non-existent for many people in addiction. It is why we have the highest levels of drug deaths in Europe - a disgraceful situation for one of the wealthiest countries in the EU. That is an expression of the scale of inequality in this country. It is also why more than than 70% of people in prison suffer from some form of drug addiction. That is at least 3,889 people out of a total prison population of 5,556. The entire repressive system of courts and prisons could be radically reduced if instead of criminalising people for their addictions and expanding the prison system like the Government is doing, it prioritised addiction prevention and treatment. It costs €99,000 to keep one person in prison for a year. That is €385 million per year that we are spending to keep people with addiction problems in prison. Imagine what a massive expansion that would be if we instead put that money into prevention, treatment and rehabilitation programmes and tackled the inequality, trauma and adverse childhood experiences that draw people into addiction in the first place. Instead, we have a situation where there are only 20 addiction counsellors working across the entire Irish Prison Service, with one addiction counsellor for every 277 prisoners, of whom about 200 are likely to be addicted to drugs. That means there is no chance of getting access to treatment if someone is serving a prison sentence of less than one year, which is the case for many prisoners on drug offences.

I urge the Government to reconsider its backsliding on this vital issue. In the US, President Trump is relaunching the failed war on drugs but we do not have to follow him blindly over every cliff he goes over. The Government is backsliding as part of this rightward trend in politics in terms of military spending and abandoning climate targets. It must not do this with drugs policy as well. We should be going in the opposite direction - not just decriminalisation of drugs for personal use, which still leaves drug distribution and supply in the hands of criminal gangs, but full legalisation of them with State control and regulated distribution and supply. It is the only approach that would allow for Government regulation to ensure safety for users and eliminate profiteering on misery by either criminal gangs or private corporations.

The committee's interim report also made proposals in that direction through a cross-party consensus recommendation that steps be taken to introduce a regulatory model for certain drugs with particular reference to the development of an Irish not-for-profit regulated cannabis market. The recommendation to develop not-for-profit cannabis clubs is a sensible idea that should be pursued by the Government.

There are two aspects to a health-led approach to drugs, neither of which have been taken by the Government. One is to actually have decriminalisation or legislation, while the other is to invest in the health supports for people suffering from drug addiction, to whom the Government pays lip service. I had a Topical Issue earlier with the Minister of State on the funding of our local drug and alcohol task forces. The evidence is there.

What is happening is a slow strangulation over the years of our task forces. When the rhetoric has shifted towards having a health-led approach, the Government has cut funding over the same period of time. Over the past ten years, while total funding for the health service has almost doubled, funding for local drugs and alcohol task forces has fallen by close to 5%. We had a back and forth earlier with the Minister of State about the impact of the latest budget on funding for the task forces. It seemed clear to me at the end of our discussion that the truth is that funding is being cut again. The task forces are the people who are doing the work on the front line. They are being asked to pay an extra 1.5% in the first year for auto-enrolment and no funding is provided for that. That is a cut in real terms. There is no ongoing core increase in funding to address the cost of living or the issue of inflation. That is a cut in a real sense. There was the presentation of the important DRIVE project. Earlier, the Minister of State talked positively about it and there is a website promoting it. It is vital that we assist families who are facing horrendous intimidation over drug debts. The Minister of State is going to come back to me, so I welcome that, yet in the budget fact sheet, there is no reference to any funding for it whatsoever. There is the announcement of a new project, for example in Whitechurch, in my constituency, where 75 families have been supported by WASP Ireland, from money that was accessed under the community safety and innovation fund, but that money is over. On 1 January, they will be asking if they will be able to support these families any more because no funding is provided under DRIVE. It is not just a question of funding, but that is kind of where the rubber hits the road.

The Minister of State spoke earlier about how the task forces are an integral part and they will not be excluded and so on, but the bottom line point is that they are being excluded from the reference group to support the implementation of the new national drugs strategy. Again, the people who are on the front line in the communities most affected by drug addiction are being left out of the vital conversations on shaping the national drugs strategy. Unfortunately, none of this augurs well for an approach that takes the words "health led" seriously and actually follows that up with decriminalisation and funding for all of our drug services.

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