Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)
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I move:

That Dáil Éireann: recalls:

— the Labour Party Motion re Drugs Policy and Decriminalisation of the User, agreed by Dáil Éireann on 30th November, 2022;

— the report of the Citizens' Assembly on Drug Use, published in January 2024;

— the interim report of the Oireachtas Special Joint Committee on Drugs Use, published in October 2024; and

— the commitment in the Programme for Government to a health-led response for people found in possession of drugs for personal use, with diversion to health services, and the commitment to work collaboratively on any recommendations issued by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use;

notes that:

— there has been little progress on achieving these objectives, while use of controlled drugs continues to rise;

— since the opening of Ireland's first medically supervised injecting centre in December 2024, nearly a decade after being first proposed and legislated for, there has been no further progress on the provision of safe consumption spaces;

— the use of cocaine has rapidly increased in Ireland, and Health Research Board (HRB) figures show it is now the most common drug treated, accounting for 40 per cent of all treatment cases in 2024, a 7 per cent increase on 2023, and a 250 per cent increase over seven years since 2017;

— the potency of drugs being sold for consumption is increasing, and new synthetic drugs continue to be introduced with unknown long-term health impacts; and

— the European Drug Report 2024: Trends and Developments, showed Ireland had the highest level of drug deaths in Europe in 2020, while HRB figures show 286 drug-induced deaths in Ireland in 2021, and 352 in 2020; and

calls on the Government to:

— designate the forthcoming National Drugs Strategy as an interim strategy, recognising that the final report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use, mandated to respond to the Citizens' Assembly, is due in June 2026;

— establish a dedicated Cabinet Committee on Drugs Use, to prepare a whole-of-Government response to the policy and legislative changes that will be necessary following the final Committee report;

— swiftly move to develop additional fixed and mobile safer consumption spaces, including Mobile Overdose Prevention Centres in our main cities;

— as a matter of absolute urgency, implement a comprehensive health-led response to the possession of drugs for personal use;

— decriminalise the possession of drugs for personal use by repealing Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1977;

— commit to multi-annual funding for harm reduction services, and the resources necessary to support people who use drugs, in accessing health, social and recovery supports;

— ensure appropriate, meaningful, and sustained involvement of people with living and lived experience of drug use in the design, implementation, and evaluation of all drug-related policies and services; and

— ensure regulatory oversight of all drug treatment services, with a commitment to person-centred and evidence-informed support programmes.

Drugs mean different things to different people from the person who has a serious addiction to the recreational user to the families trying to support their teenager to the grandparents having to step in and to the communities suffering with dealing and drug-related and violent intimidation. While each of these groups may have a different perspective, I think all would agree that the current war on drugs has not worked.

As the Minister of State knows, drugs are in every community across this country. They are almost in every bar and sports club and even workplaces. Whether people like it or not, drugs are all around us. Some people get away with using them on a recreational basis whereas others do not, falling into spiral of vicious addiction that robs many of their basic dignity, their health, their family and, sometimes, their lives. The reality that trying to police our way to a drug-free world has not worked. This has been the experiment of the past 50 years here in Ireland and in most developed countries across the world.

This morning, I am proud to be introducing our Private Members' motion on behalf of the Labour Party. I welcome campaigners and advocates from a range of organisations to our Public Gallery. They have been at the coal face for many years, working with those in addiction and those who use drugs and dealing with the failures of our system that we currently have. For many years, the Labour Party has been campaigning for a radically different approach to drugs and to reducing harm in this country. I want to pay particular tribute to my colleague, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, for his pioneering campaigning on this-----

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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Hear, hear.

Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)
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-----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.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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I commend Deputy Marie Sherlock on proposing this important motion and pay tribute to our colleague, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin MEP, who has led on decriminalisation for so long. I welcome campaigners and students to the Public Gallery and I thank them for their support on this.

It is three years since Labour brought forward a motion on decriminalisation in November 2022. The Government’s response then was to give it time. It has had lots of time – three years. In that time, 30,000 people will have been arrested for personal drug use. We have seen thousands of overdoses, hundreds of deaths and families, communities and individuals behind those figures, trapped in cycles of addiction and stigma.

I practised as a criminal defence barrister for many years. I represented people who were charged and prosecuted for possession of small quantities of drugs. That experience convinced me our system is broken. People are stigmatised and not supported through addiction and people's lives have been changed irrevocably by criminalisation and yet the last major policy breakthrough was brought about when Aodhán Ó Ríordáin was Minister and who successfully legislated for safe consumption areas. The long-promised first medically supervised injecting centre finally opened in December 2024 in Dublin, nearly a decade after Aodhán’s initiative. However, as our new motion notes, no further progress has been made on additional safe consumption spaces or on a change in policy. Yet, more and more people are seeking treatment for problem drug use, new synthetic substances are emerging and the 2024 European Drug Report shows Ireland’s rate of drug deaths is among the very highest in the EU.

We need change and we need an evidence-based policy. We need to look at other countries like Portugal where they redirected users from the courts to the health services and reduced overdose deaths. We need to look at the blueprint for reform offered in this motion. We call for a dedicated Cabinet committee on drugs use, for a comprehensive health-led response to possession and, crucially, for the decriminalisation of people found with drugs for personal use through repeal of section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1997. We want to see funding for harm-reduction services and genuine involvement of people with lived experience.

These are not radical ideas; they are the natural continuation of what health experts, families and communities affected have been saying for decades. Our healthcare system already embraces elements of harm reduction, so we need to move our criminal justice system. On the one hand, the State acknowledges the illness of addiction but on the other hand endorses sending people to prisons where drug use is rife. We are telling people to use safely on the one hand and then criminalising them for doing so on the other.

Decriminalisation is about saving lives. The Government’s response was that we should wait. We have waited long enough. It is time to act on the evidence and change the law; healthcare, not handcuffs.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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My colleague and Labour MEP for Dublin, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, has led the charge - as has rightly been said - on this issue in Ireland for a number of years now and he is continuing to lead the way in Europe.

The most obvious example to follow in a European context is that of Portugal. One thing is crystal clear from the Portuguese example, that is, moving to a health-based and approach away from punishment, reduces serious harms from drug use. Portugal has more than 20 years’ experience under its belt and in the first two decades of this approach, it saw deaths from drug use and incidents of HIV tumble, as well as a fall in prison the population. In 1999, it saw 369 people lose their lives due to overdose. By 2016, that figure had tumbled to just 30. HIV diagnoses due to drug injection also fell dramatically over the same period. In 2000, there were 907 such diagnoses, falling to just 18 in 2017.

Another benefit to this approach to drug use will be to reduce the pressure on prison places. As long as the change in policy is matched by multi-annual resourcing of health and addiction services and supports for people who use drugs, we have a chance here to take a transformational approach to drug use and make a meaningful reduction in the harm caused by drugs.

The endless Garda hours used chasing people who use drugs can be turned on those who profit from the misery caused by the sale and trafficking of drugs. The citizens' assembly has done tremendous work on this issue. Recommendation 17 from its report argues for the introduction of a “comprehensive health-led response to possession of drugs for personal use." While possession of controlled drugs would remain illegal, people found in possession of illicit drugs for personal uses would be afforded “extensive opportunities to engage voluntarily with health-led services”, the citizens' assembly recommendation explained.

For this policy to work, the citizens' assembly laid out the supports that need to be in place in the following recommendation, that is, recommendation 18. It says very clearly:

Government should allocate significant additional funding on a multi-annual basis to drugs services across the statutory, community and voluntary sectors, to address existing service gaps, including in the provision of community-based and residential treatment services, to support the implementation of the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly.

Quite frankly, this has not been the case and has not been so for successive governments. Without that funding, any policy change will be set up to fail. The services are already in place on the ground in many communities but by God they are stretched. They need certainty and multi-annual funding. Services like Red Door in my hometown of Drogheda provide vital support to those in addiction and are ready - they stand ready, willing and able - to do more if given the resources to do so and if we can introduce the kind of transformational change we need in drugs policy in this country to support people who need it most.

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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We need a comprehensive new plan on drug use in this country. The dial has not moved in a number of years. Many of us have come on a journey over the past 20 years with regard to how we deal with this issue, myself included. I acknowledge my colleague, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, who has certainly influenced me and I would say many others on this issue. His interventions as a former Minister are the interventions we are still looking at today. We finally have a centre for consumption here in Dublin but nowhere else in Ireland.

What has happened in the past is simply not enough. We need a complete dial change in relation to this issue and Government needs to be brave and make those changes. My colleagues have outlined them. We need a mature strategy on this. It is important to say that when we come to the issue of drug use, decriminalisation does not mean legalisation. Once we cross that line as a Legislature, then we can collectively work together. That is the most important line many people need to get their heads around.

Criminal-based and justice-based actions in relation to this have not worked.

This needs to be health-led. It is obvious now. With 10,000 people arrested every year for having drugs on them for personal consumption reasons, the number of man hours being taken up for An Garda Síochána is absolutely crazy. We need a policy change, and the Government needs to be brave about it. I raise the volume of drug-induced deaths purely because people are often so helpless that they will not seek help. That is the bottom line. There is a stigma. There is a lack of pathways. There is a lack of empathy in some cases. We need an holistic approach across justice, across health and across community to help people. What has gone on in the past has failed. We have to acknowledge that as a country. I hope the Minister of State will be brave enough to come along with us. As a party we do not have to own this. We are just so empathetic on this issue we have to use our Private Members' time to push this forward as something that, as a country, we need deal with.

Finally, I want to address the issue of cocaine use. Cocaine use in this country at the moment is at an all-time crisis. We need a plan, as a country, not just on the criminal side and not just dealing with those bringing cocaine into this country but as a society we need to educate young people. I have gone to too many meetings at sporting clubs and met too many young people, and friends and neighbours of mine, who have become addicted to cocaine because of a lifestyle choice. In many cases these are middle class people who are purchasing this drug. I say as Chair of the sports committee that collectively as a society and all sporting organisations need to say enough is enough because it is in every sporting organisation in this country. Many young people think taking cocaine means they do take on calories, they do not have pints and do not drink as much, they do not have hangovers, etc. However, there are additional costs later on in life caused by the addiction I have seen in young people in my club, clubs around me and all over this country. We need a plan, particularly being led by sporting organisations, to actually address this.

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I am delighted to inform the House on recent developments and achievements on drug policy. The Government will not oppose the motion. It is not helpful to get into a political dispute about drugs policy. It is important not to argue over something that affects the lives of so many. As new Minister of State, I assure Members that I am very mindful that we are talking about families and people's lives. It is my absolute aim to make sure I work with the Department and other Members to work together on this. The previous Government set up the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use, and the Joint Committee on Drugs Use has been re-established in this term. I have engaged with the Seanad and next week I will meet with the joint committee, and I am looking forward to that. I intend to continue to work with all stakeholders to develop the next drugs strategy. It is very important for me that all of us work together to achieve this. This is not just a Dublin issue; this is a countrywide issue. I have seen it myself since becoming a Minister of State.

I would like to reaffirm the Government’s commitment to a health-led approach to drug use. People experiencing problematic drugs should be met with compassion, dignity, and care. I am very mindful of that. The health-led approach to drug use is set out in the national drugs strategy and the Government priority is to develop a successor strategy to cover the period 2026 to 2029. The work on a successor strategy will advance and I have established a time-bound, independently chaired steering group to provide oversight, guidance and expert advice in the drafting of the strategy. I have asked the group to complete their work and present a draft strategy for consideration by December 2025. That is my aim. We can see how important this is. This is what I have to do. As Deputy Kelly said, "be brave". I need to be brave now. I need to have the first draft of this strategy by December. That is what I want as Minister of State.

The steering group is a technical group brought together to distil the citizens' assembly recommendations, independent evaluation and stakeholder consultations into a comprehensive successor national drugs strategy. The strategy will guide the development and delivery of a health-led approach to drugs over the next four years. The membership is drawn from Departments, associated agencies and people with lived experience. I am very mindful that we work with people with lived experience and clinical and research expertise. The steering group is supported by a reference group of stakeholders who compliment the technical expertise, ensuring the new strategy is informed by real-world knowledge and lived experience. That is what I am going on now. I totally agree with Members that it is all about families and people with lived experience. The membership is drawn from civil society, task forces, community-based service providers and family support services from around the country. A significant proportion have lived and living experience of drugs. Both groups are well advanced in their work and are on track to deliver the draft strategy by December 2025. I am committed to publishing the successor drugs strategy in early 2026 and I am determined to avoid delays, as was emphasized by the chairs of the citizens' assembly and the joint committees.

The Government allocated over €300 million on drug-related public expenditure in 2023, including €160 million on drug services. This represents an increase of 28% on 2017 funding levels. A further €4.2 million and 34 posts for drug services and initiatives was secured in budget 2025. Additional investment of €11 million was secured in budget 2026 to address gaps in service provision. I am very mindful about services as well. It is very important that we have the services for anybody that needs to access services around the whole country. This funding will enhance access to and delivery of drug services in the community. It will also strengthen the prevention of drug use among children and young people and minimise the harms of drug use for families and communities.

In developing the new strategy, we must consider the wide prevalence of problem drug use across society and provide appropriate services to meet the health and social needs of the diverse population groups who use drugs. A record figure of 13,295 cases were treated for problem drug use in 2024. This represents a 50% increase in the capacity of treatment places since 2017 and reflects our ongoing investment in expanding services. Demand for drug treatment is across all regions of the country, all age groups, men and women, people with children and those without, and those who are unemployed as well those in employment. We are looking across all the sectors. A supervised injecting facility opened in Dublin city in December 2024. I am delighted that during its first seven months, staff have assisted over 1000 clients and there have been over 120 interventions to prevent a fatal overdose. I have seen how the facility is helping to save lives. The facility will be evaluated over the 18-month pilot phase, and this will inform decisions about the continuation of the Dublin facility and the development of facilities in other regions. We are looking at that too.

The programme for Government commits to divert those found in possession of drugs for personal use to health services. This will be done through the health diversion scheme. This scheme embodies the health-led approach to drugs and it will lead to better outcomes for people and communities. Along with the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, I have agreed that the scheme will start on an administrative basis. While the possession of controlled drugs will remain illegal, people with drugs for personal use will be given the opportunity to engage voluntarily with healthcare services. Health and well-being are something I am mindful of. An Garda Síochána and the Director of Public Prosecutions are finalising the operational details. Once we have sign-off, the scheme will start at a national level. The scheme is in line with the recommendation of the citizens' assembly.

I am very aware of the loss and grief felt by the families who have lost loved ones to drug overdose. Each life lost is one too many. The risk of drug overdose deaths can be reduced further by getting people into drug treatment and increasing access to Naloxone, which is the antidote for opioid-related overdose. My Department is working closely with the HSE to increase awareness and accessibility of Naloxone. That is really one of our key issues going forward. It is important that this lifesaving medication is made more accessible to support workers, peers, and family members.

In 2024, 1,758 people participated in naloxone administration training and 6,944 units of naloxone were supplied by the HSE to services. I reaffirm my intention to publish as soon as possible the successor national drugs strategy covering the period from 2026 to 2029, accompanied by a two-year action plan. I will have an action plan every two years. That will be worked with all of us. There are several more actions we need to take. Drugs are changing all the time. This is a changing world. All of us in this House are very mindful of that. We cannot be complacent about the harms and dangers associated with illicit drug use and a volatile drugs market. It is imperative that we have a drugs strategy relevant to the times we live in that responds to the continuing health and societal problems presented by established and new illicit drugs; it is always changing. We also need to align our drugs strategy with the forthcoming EU drugs strategy and to reflect the urgency given to drugs by the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use. It is my intention to continue to engage with the Oireachtas, including the Joint Committee on Drug Use, in implementing the successor strategy so that there is cross-party support for the strategy.

I am glad to be here. As I said, we are not opposing this motion. All of us need to work together. Drugs are a huge challenge across the whole country. It requires all of us working together through services and the drugs task force which was brought up earlier as a Topical Issue. We have 24 drug task forces around the country which do excellent work and are on the ground in communities and the different agencies attached. My aim as Minister of State is to work together to get the solutions, get the strategy right and get the services right for those who need them. That is what I intend to do.

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I thank the Minister of State for that response. I am glad she acknowledged we need a step change in how we treat problematic drug users. I represent Limerick city, which the Minister of State knows well. Our city has been absolutely destroyed by drugs, whether the drug barons who prey on vulnerable communities or the crack cocaine epidemic that has ripped through our city. Limerick is unfortunately the crack cocaine capital of Ireland. It has ravaged so many people, even people I went to school with. When talking about drugs more generally, my colleague, Deputy Kelly, referenced cocaine. I cannot go on a night out without seeing people off their heads on cocaine. In fact, I have been routinely offered cocaine in pubs in my own city of Limerick. You see people filing into cubicles. They are not going in there to use the bathroom. I have even seen the effects of problematic cocaine use knock on my own front door. It destroys everything. It destroys people financially, relationally and sexually. Crack cocaine is the most evil and insidious of all drugs. Limerick, as I said, has unfortunately become the crack cocaine capital of Ireland. People travel to Limerick because the crack is cheap and they can buy it in some of the poorest estates in this entire country. There is a house in St. Mary's Park that the locals refer to as Aldi because people are bussed in from outside Limerick. We have another issue because we have an epidemic of sex work. Crack cocaine is so addictive that women are forced into sex work to pay for it. Now, we have an issue with a lot of pregnancies resulting from that.

When it comes to treatment, bar the 30 detox beds in Bruree, people are often forced to travel to Dublin, Carlow or Athy, if they are lucky. When they finish treatment, they are often back into the 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. hostel in Limerick and the vicious cycle begins again. Drug use and problematic drug use are changing. The level of poly drug use in Limerick is incredibly worrying. There are certain treatment centres you cannot get into if you are in benzos, methadone, etc. That needs to be radically changed. That change starts with language. Calling sick, vulnerable people the j-word or "druggies" should not be considered acceptable. This comes from social inequality across the board. We have no psychiatric service in Limerick Prison. We had 92 drug overdoses in our prison system last year. While we have a recovery worker and a dual diagnosis team, we need much more. People from the most deprived areas are disproportionately impacted by this. We need an all-of-government approach to this issue. That starts with taking it out of the courts and into the healthcare system. Nearly 100 people in our prison system nearly died last year due to problematic drug use. That is shocking. It says clearly where we are going wrong.

Robert O'Donoghue (Dublin Fingal West, Labour)
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Today, the Labour Party is calling for the urgent adoption of a comprehensive public health approach to the decriminalisation of possession of drugs for personal use and the development of safer consumption spaces. I thank my party colleague, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, for his work over the past number of years. I thank the Minister of State for not opposing this motion. The purpose of this motion is clear - to highlight the failure of Ireland’s current drugs policy, to see through the work of the citizens’ assembly and, most importantly, to seek decriminalisation of people who use drugs. We have to be honest about drugs and addiction in Ireland. Drugs are in wide use in every community and, as referenced by a number of my colleagues, in every income bracket. This is not an issue confined to certain areas or disadvantaged communities. It is a nationwide issue and we need to change our approach. Criminalising the person has not worked. It has not reduced drug use. It has not reduced drug harm. Instead, it has trapped people in cycles of stigma, poverty and punishment. Current policy is a barrier to treatment, to rehabilitation and to people moving on with their lives. It is not grounded in evidence or respect for human dignity.

When we talk about people who use drugs in our communities, too often the conversation starts with stigma and ends with punishment. The evidence from most other, progressive European countries tells us something different. It tells us that criminalisation does not solve the problem; it just drives people into further harm, stigma and isolation. When someone struggles with alcohol or gambling, we offer treatment and support but when it is drugs, we reach for punishment. That double standard has to end. In countries that have taken a different path, decriminalised possession for personal use and focused on a holistic approach, people are no longer dragged through the courts. Instead, they are referred to health services and social support panels. The results speak for themselves - drug-related deaths have dropped dramatically, rates of serious addiction have fallen and crime has dropped which in itself frees up the criminal justice system. People have rebuilt their lives without fear of being branded a criminal. This has been achieved alongside safe consumption spaces, heroin-assisted treatments and strong social supports. Crucially, overall drug use did not rise.

Decriminalisation makes practical sense. It can reduce pressure on the courts, the Garda and our prison system. It was reported last month that it costs €99,000 to house a prisoner for a year. The current approach does not work. We know that addiction is not a choice, but recovery can be an option if we redirect services and funding into treatment and community supports. This would be a far better use of public money. We have an opportunity to build a model rooted in public health, housing, education and social support that saves lives instead of wasting them in courtrooms and prisons. Right now, too many people are caught in a revolving door in and out of prison and never given a real chance to recover. That cycle has to end but only if we have the courage to change our approach and to treat drug use as a health issue instead of a handcuffs issue. This motion is, above all, is about people.

Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I thank my colleague, Deputy Sherlock, for bringing forward this important motion. I also acknowledge our MEP, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, for his considerable work. He has brought many of us in the Labour Party on a journey in relation to drug education and its effects on society. It is an education we can all be part of and need to be part of. The Minister of State mentioned in her remarks a political dispute on the drugs issue. We cannot have a political dispute on a drugs issue. We must all, as she said, work together because this is about people and families. That is the language we must start using when talking about a drugs strategy. As has been said by many of my colleagues, decriminalisation of drugs for personal use puts the person in addiction at the centre and offers opportunities for recovery.

That is the most important item we can discuss today. The Minister is right. Drug addiction, which used to be an urban issue, is now in every corner of this country. In every small village, every rural area and every small town in this country, drug addiction is an issue. There is absolutely no doubt about that and it is communities that are being affected day in, day out. We need to take a health-led approach to this but we also need to take a whole-of-society approach. It was my colleague, Deputy Kelly, who spoke about sporting clubs and I want to concentrate on that as well for a moment. I am glad that he, as committee chair, will lead on this because we have to have a discussion in our sports clubs about addiction. Too many of our athletes are suffering from drug addiction. It is only when, as another colleague of mine said, you are in a pub, you see it seems easier now to get your fix than it is to get a takeaway in most of these places. It is just a matter of a phone call and then that addiction is fed. That is a problem.

It is also very important to talk about services today. The Minister will be aware, being next door to us in Athy in Kildare, that I am a director of Willow Community Counselling Services, which is just up the road from her. However, the problem with Willow Community Counselling Services is that we are going cap in hand begging for funding. Sharon Malloy is doing absolutely tremendous work there and yet we are getting knocked back every time we go looking for funding. When it comes to our meetings, which we have regularly, the one topic is funding.

In the time I have left, I also want to mention Cuan Mhuire and Nicola Kelly and Sr. Consilio, who do great work. That is the type of service we need to have because they give people hope. These services are in every village and every town and community groups are coming together now to support those with addiction.

We must treat this as a human story and we must use the language that these are our brothers, our sisters, our cousins, our aunts and our uncles. That is the new strategy to which we must talk when we are talking about drug strategy in this country.

Ann Graves (Dublin Fingal East, Sinn Fein)
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In the last Dáil, the Government established the Joint Committee on Drugs Use. The focus was to implement the findings of the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use. The work of the joint committee is ongoing and has yet to be completed, making this motion somewhat premature. Sinn Féin, however, will not oppose the motion but both Government and Opposition must allow the committee to do its work without interference.

Sinn Féin supports a comprehensive health-led response to drug use. This ensures the State responds to drug use as a health issue and not a criminal issue. Sinn Féin policy does not align with the repealing of section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, however, those caught with drugs for personal use should be offered every opportunity to engage with health-led services. This will keep people out of the criminal justice system. The establishment of the citizens' assembly was a major step in the right direction. The assembly allowed people to engage with experts, families, services and learn about international best practice. The final report was testament to people's commitment to an important and sensitive issue. Out of the assembly came the establishment of the joint committee. The committee was empowered under the terms of reference to consider the report of the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use and provide a response to the subject matter of the report, including a reasoned response to each of the 36 recommendations contained in the report. The recommendations are varied. They include calling on the Government to prioritise drug misuse, a whole-of-government response tackling the drug crisis and demanding that the Government must include key stakeholders when developing policy. However, when it came to the issue of responding to personal drug use, the assembly was crystal clear. It voted for a comprehensive health-led approach to drug use.

A comprehensive health-led response diverts people towards health services and away from the criminal system. This response will greatly reduce or eliminate prospects of people being charged and convicted. The citizens' assembly recommendation of a comprehensive health-led response is focused on decriminalisation, diversion and dissuasion. It would ensure the State response to drug use as a health issue and not a criminal issue. Controlled drugs would remain illegal but those caught with drugs would be offered extensive opportunity to engage with health-led services. This is not to be confused with legalisation. The importation, sale, distribution and possession of a controlled substance would remain illegal.

Reports early in the year confirmed that the Government would be introducing a long-awaited diversion scheme for people caught with drugs. This scheme does not in any way reflect the comprehensive health-led approach to drug use agreed by the citizens' assembly. The announcement is an attempt by the Department of justice to claw back control of drugs rather than allowing it become a public health issue. This will undermine the work being done by the joint committee, which is yet to complete its work. The three strikes and you are out referral system fails to recognise the complex and long waiting lists for residential treatment. A simple referral by a judge will not always allow someone gain access to the service they need. Imposing an arbitrary number of referrals to treatment services fails to recognise the causes and complexity of addiction. It also fails to recognise that it often takes several attempts at rehabilitation before somebody addicted to drugs will get into recovery.

While acknowledging that every family may be affected by drug addiction, it does not affect every family or community in the same way. It moves from drug addiction to a drug crisis when playgrounds become open drug markets, when the school gates becomes sites of drug violence and when streets are held to ransom by violence and lack of policing. The issue is compounded by drug-related intimidation, waiting lists, lack of mental health services and poor housing conditions. Each of these issues highlights the total failure of governments to adequately respond to the drug crisis.

Tackling the causes and consequences of the drugs crisis must be a political priority. Consecutive governments have allowed it to slip down the agenda and that must, and can, change. We need a whole-of-government approach to prepare and implement policies that tackle the causes and consequences of Ireland's drug crisis. The national drug strategy must reflect the work of the Joint Committee on Drugs Use and be informed by service users and providers. While Sinn Féin will not oppose this motion, it is pre-emptive of the outcome of the work of the committee.

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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In the last Dáil, I was very honoured to be the party spokesperson on addiction, recovery and well-being. It was a privilege for me to meet all the different groups and organisations who were working at the front line, supporting people in recovery and those in the throws of addiction and supporting their families. I commend my colleague, Deputy Graves, who has taken over this role now. She has hit the ground running and is doing a huge amount of work. A huge amount of work is needed here, especially for those who are in the throws of addiction, for those who are trying to start the recovery journey and for those who are well into that journey.

The Minister has to be honest as to the attitude of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over the years. We saw it in the Chamber in the last Dáil. There were some appalling and stigmatising comments about people who are in the throws of addiction. Even the last Minister, when I made the point that at least one person with lived experience of gambling should be on the gambling board, said they would not be able for it or that it would be too challenging for them. How patronising is that for a person who has the lived experience. The thing here is that we need to listen to people with the lived experience about what they have gone through.

The only promise the Government has made is in relation to the citizens' assembly. This report had detailed recommendations. Not all were agreed and more work was needed. That is now what the Joint Committee on Drugs Use is doing. We need to support that work and to tease out these issues because we have a crisis. I know from personal experience of my own family members and friends. I have friends and family members who have died. I am not going to go into it here but I get it. I understand it. It comes from trauma, from poverty and from a lack of services and supports.

There needs to be a fundamental change by this Government when it comes to funding task forces, drugs services and rehabilitation services, supporting people in recovery and how it perceives people in addiction. If you walk the streets of any city or town, or even some villages, you will see people in the throes of it. People walk past them and do not even look at them. It is not like they are not human beings. Every one of them has a family, their own story and their own voice and we have to support them. One of the really important bits of work that was done in the committee in the last Dáil was that we heard from experts from Portugal, America and British Columbia. In British Columbia they were very forward-thinking in relation to decriminalisation, but after 15 months they had to row back because suddenly people were taking drugs in playgrounds, in parks and on the streets. There was a free-for-all. We need to get these experts in. I am thinking of the work that has been done in Portugal. Our joint committee on drugs can get all these experts in and come up with a plan. We can learn from what has been done in other jurisdictions - both the mistakes made and the good work done – and bring forward a policy.

I will finish on this. We want to work with people. Deputy Kelly said a while ago that the Labour Party Members are bringing this forward because they think it is a really important piece of work. I think the vast majority of us feel we can work together on this but there has to be an open agenda and an open attitude to it.

Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this really important motion. I apologise to Deputy Sherlock for interrupting her photo opportunity earlier as that was not my intention.

What underlies addiction is poverty, and a symptom of poverty is trauma and a symptom of trauma is addiction. It is a circle that keeps going around. I am from north Clondalkin. I grew up there in the eighties. It was a time of economic hardship across the country but areas like mine suffered the most. We grew up in poverty. This is not me standing up and saying "poor me", because when I say I grew up in poverty I did not know it because everybody around me was experiencing the same thing. We simply did not know any better. What we did know was not to ask our parents for too much because it simply was not there. North Clondalkin is an area of high disadvantage. I have seen the devastation drugs have inflicted in my area since I was a child. I live in the community still and I have seen the intergenerational addiction and trauma within families. This trauma, as I said, comes from poverty but also from parents of my friends being products of the industrial schools, the Magdalen laundries and the mother and baby homes. I can speak to this from personal experience because my father was sent to work in the Magdalen laundries at the age of 12. He is 72 now and is only starting to speak about it. This is the trauma people experienced and he knows I am speaking about this today. This trauma was unwittingly passed down by parents to the next generation.

When I say "area of high disadvantage" I am speaking about the government policies of the time, like putting people from the same socioeconomic background into the same area at the same time without having the necessary infrastructure there. When I say we were disadvantaged and in poverty we were not in poverty because of a lack of character or of strength, because the people from my area – my parents, neighbours and friends – had to get out and fight for every single thing our area had, whether that is schools, something simple like buses, health centres and everything else. My very first interaction with activism was fighting for a school in my area. We were sent to a school that was deemed inappropriate for other pupils in a more affluent part of the constituency but it was okay for the students of Greenfort, Shancastle and Harelawn to attend that school. That is what you are being put against. You had to fight that all the time. A lot of my family, friends and neighbours succumbed to addiction over the years. That is just a simple fact of things. While you cannot physically change the environment you are living in people look for alternatives and one of the alternatives they had to was to look at drugs, because they give people the ability to self-soothe and give calm to an anxious inner world. It is called getting out of your head for a reason. If you cannot get out of your estate you can get out of your head in a different way without having to move. It stops a problem for that very short time and then that problem turns into addiction.

I have only got half a minute left, which I will use to speak about local services. I have worked for years in front-line addiction services in my area. I do not know how long we have been calling for multiannual funding for. It is so important because it would allow agencies that are dealing with the front line to forward plan to deal with things when they arrive at the door. We knew the crack cocaine problem was an issue long before it was being discussed in this House because the front-line services were seeing it, but they had not got the resources to go out and tackle it. We need multiannual funding. If I could get one thing out of today, it would be that.

Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion and thank the Labour Party for proposing it. I restate Sinn Féin’s support for the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use. That report was crystal clear. It said Ireland must adopt a comprehensive health-led response to drug use, one that treats addiction and substance misuse not as a criminal issue or set of criminal issues but as a public health issue. We in Sinn Féin support recommendation 17 of the report, which calls for the introduction of a health-led approach to possession of drugs for personal use. This recommendation represents a major step forward in reforming how the State responds to drug use. It is rooted in compassion, is supported by evidence, is pragmatic and aligns with international best practice which, as Deputy Gould said, we must rely upon the mistakes and successes of.

The Government established the Joint Committee on Drugs Use following the citizens' assembly’s report. The focus of that committee is to implement the assembly’s findings, especially in relation to a health-led diversion approach. We are actively involved in supporting that process. We want to ensure Ireland moves away from criminalisation and punishment towards prevention, treatment and recovery. A health-led approach means while controlled drugs would remain illegal, people found in possession for personal use would be diverted into health services rather than the criminal justice system. The State would respond to drug use and misuse primarily as a public health issue and this model would ensure those struggling with addiction are met with support and opportunity, not the stigma and criminal records that can further entrench addiction, hamper recovery and have lifelong impacts for them. We also acknowledge the assembly left the detailed legislative and policy design to the Oireachtas, and that work is now under way through the re-established joint committee. I commend my party colleagues for their engagement on that and the leadership they are showing.

The assembly identified key issues we must balance, including health diversion, decriminalisation and dissuasive sanctions. We believe that balance is possible. It will take some work to design but it is work that is under way and needs to continue. To give credit where it is due, the assembly was a vital democratic process. That was very important and the findings bear that out. It brought together experts, families and service users to look at international best practice and to learn from it.

Our policy position is clear. We support the de facto approach that has been referenced already. The offence of simple possession should remain in law, but we should have a much more pragmatic response where cautions and health interventions are the order of the day, rather than court appearances and convictions. The Garda caution scheme must be reviewed and modernised. Prison sentences for simple possession should remain technically possible, perhaps, but used only in the most exceptional of circumstances. It should not be the norm and our district courts should not be full to overflowing with these cases. Convictions for possession should be treated as spent and ultimately expunged. We do not need this following people around for the rest of their days. For those who repeatedly offend, dissuasive sanctions such as restorative justice, community service or diversion programmes are probably the most appropriate avenue. The courts – potentially specialist courts – and professional regulatory bodies should apply these sanctions fairly and proportionately. This is a really important debate. It is something that will continue to happen on Committee Stage but it is something we will need to return to in the House.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Once again we are going to have a lot of agreement in here. I welcome the Labour Party bringing this motion forward from the point of view of having an opportunity to speak, because we do not talk sufficiently about this issue and the impact drug addiction has on our communities. It is welcome that there is an element of people coming around to the health-led, trauma-led, harm reduction methodology that is required for dealing with drug addiction, that we accept it is based on poverty and intergenerational trauma, and that there is an understanding that if we continue doing what we are doing, it is not going to work. The war on drugs, whether carried out by Ronald Reagan or by Donald Trump today, is a failed enterprise.

Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value. It was said to me previously by someone in the Minister's position that until it is sufficiently important that this issue is at Cabinet, nothing is going to change. We can all mention the really good projects we have in our constituencies such as The Red Door Project, Turas, FASN and MQI. Even homelessness services have to deal with a huge cohort of people who have drug issues but the regional drugs task forces are just about keeping the system going; I would describe it as keeping the engine going with baling twine.

We have not got real in any way on this issue. Drug addiction is everywhere. We all know there is not a bar in operation that does not have a well-functioning toilet facility, and cocaine is everywhere. You just cannot avoid it. I welcome the work that has been done by the GAA and other sporting groups on it, but with all of that and the need to tackle the issue, the fact is that the biggest impact is still in disadvantaged, working class areas. We can walk up and down the streets and we will know who the drug dealers are and the houses they live in. It has gone on for far too long. That is with all the really good work that has been done at times by the Garda and the Criminal Assets Bureau, and we need to see more of that. We need to protect those who fall into addiction and give supports to those families who require them at an early stage. We need to make sure we invest in the likes of The Greentown Project and move people away from criminality in every way we possibly can.

I have also said before that we need a real conversation. It is also about the chaos that impacts on people's lives, the deaths that have occurred, and the drug debt and intimidation that have impacted on a generation of drug addicts' families. We also have to deal with the chaos that is caused to communities. Whether we are talking about Tusla, the Garda, the local council or all those other powers, educational services and everything, the tools and the powers are not there to deal with what is needed in supporting the addict, supporting their family and those communities that are impacted. I ask that we get real and that we have a holistic conversation. We talk about whole-of-government approaches but we generally do not see them. This is just too costly to individuals and to society in general.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I thank Deputy Sherlock and the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. The opportunity to discuss decriminalisation can never come too soon. I welcome the opportunity to speak on it today. The motion states that we recall the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use, the interim report of the Oireachtas Committee on Drugs Use and the Misuse of Drugs Act. All we are doing is recalling them, because all of these measures, debates and conversations have been had, but the same policies remain largely in place despite the evidence the various initiatives have brought forward. We are stuck remembering promises that have never yet become policy. While successive Governments have talked about a health-led approach, what they have actually been giving us is a criminal justice system pretending to be healthcare policy. Any day of the week at the Circuit Court, there are people facing charges and offences and, in the vast majority of cases, if we could back over that person's life, we would see substance misuse, trauma and a form of substance misuse that is about self-medicating for traumas that may go back generations in some part. Every single day in this country, people of all ages are stopped and searched, charged and shamed, often for having been caught with a small amount of drugs for personal. In reality, that should be a matter for a GP and not a garda.

Since our inception, the Social Democrats have always been clear that if a Government truly believes in a health-led approach, then it is time to act like it. That absolutely starts with the repeal of section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. We cannot have a decriminalisation-lite model subsequent to winning the argument, hopefully, on decriminalisation. Decriminalisation actually means removing the criminal offence of possession for personal use. The citizens' assembly was clear on that, as was the previous Oireachtas committee on drug use. Everything else, the sale, supply, cultivation, manufacture, remains illegal. That is the distinction between decriminalisation and legalisation. Decriminalisation does not mean the free-for-all that some people fear, as has been expressed in the Chamber already. It does not mean drugs are sold in shops. It means people are not dragged through the courts or branded as criminals simply for struggling or making a personal choice that harms nobody else. I will talk at the end about the mechanisms we can put in place should we repeal section 3 of the Act. We have all heard the scare stories. We have been told decriminalisation will make things work, use will skyrocket, dealers will thrive, communities will become less safe. The evidence internationally tells a very different story. In Portugal, where they decriminalised over 20 years ago, injection-associated HIV infections have fallen, the number of people in prison for drug offences has dropped, drug-related deaths have declined and, crucially, drug use did not increase. That is because when we stop treating people like criminals, we create a space for them to be treated like human beings.

I represent communities where drugs have done untold damage, families are devastated, people are living in fear of drug-related intimidation and organised crime feeds on poverty and despair. I understand why some people ask how this will make things better where they live. The answer is that criminalising the drug user has never made communities safer. It has not stopped dealers, dismantled networks or brought down levels of violence. All it has done is fill our courts, ruin young lives with criminal records and make recovery harder. When Portugal decriminalised, the police did not lose power, they refocused it. They shifted from arresting people with tiny amounts to targeting those higher up the chain. The weight of drugs seized actually increased. Far from helping dealers, decriminalisation takes away the smokescreen that lets them operate in plain sight. Some people say it is too complex to repeal section 3 but I would argue that is not the case. Section 3 is a stand-alone offence that can be repealed by a single Act of the Oireachtas. There is nothing complex about it except the political courage required to do it. In Oregon, for example, it was pointed out that after removing possession, drug use operated without sanction, which led to drug dealing and consumption in parks. That was their model, however; it does not have to be ours. If we were to repeal section 3 of the drugs offences Act, as expert testimony has indicated, we could and should replace it with council by-laws much as we have for alcohol. If somebody were to leave the Chamber now and buy a bottle of alcohol, the possession of that alcohol is not illegal. If they walked into St. Stephen's Green and opened the alcohol, it would be illegal under the council by-laws. If they consumed the alcohol and their behaviour became erratic, that would fall under the intoxication Act. We have mechanisms in our jurisdiction that would be suited to decriminalisation without the free-for-all that has been referred to. The removal of section 3 and innovative practices within the Irish model are there, have been argued for and would suit our Republic really well.

Repealing section 3 would not legalise drugs. It would simply stop the State from wasting Garda and court time and prison resources chasing people for small amounts. Those resources could be redirected to addiction services, outreach, housing and harm reduction. That is what Portugal did. Multiple UN bodies have urged us to do this. It is what the Citizens' Assembly thought it was voting for, until a flawed process left decriminalisation off the ballot entirely. The chair of the assembly has been crystal clear. Members wanted decriminalisation and voted for decriminalisation. The only reason it did not appear that way on paper was how the question was written. We have an opportunity now to finish the job they started and to respect the democratic process that this Government says it values. That is why I will keep calling for the national drugs strategy to be designated as an interim strategy. The Committee on Drugs Use, of which I am incredibly proud to be the Cathaoirleach, is still doing the hard, detailed work of building a policy that reflects the evidence and the voices of people living in this reality every single day. To push ahead with a final strategy before that report is complete would be to bypass democracy entirely. We owe it to the people who have come before that committee - the experts, workers, families and most importantly the people with lived experience - to get this right. We must ensure that their voice, when they came to a committee established by this Government, is actually catered for in the work it charged the committee to do. It is essential that it is an interim strategy. We are clearly nowhere near where we should be.

It took nearly a decade to open a single medically supervised injection centre - a decade. Now, almost a year after opening, we are seeing how effective it can be. In just seven months, it has taken thousands of injection events off the street, has saved lives and is preserving people's self-respect. In the absence of safe injection facilities, what we had for over 40 decades in this country was unsafe injection facilities in our laneways and parks. These have left the user incredibly unsafe but they also leave all of us unsafe. That is what a health-led response looks like in practice - not rhetoric, results. We should be scaling that up, not patting ourselves on the back for opening one facility a decade late.

The criminalisation of people who use drugs is one of the greatest policy failures of modern Ireland. It wastes Garda time; fills our prisons with people who need healthcare, not punishment; stigmatises people who are already struggling; and traps them in cycles of poverty and exclusion. The evidence is overwhelming. Decriminalisation does not increase use, does not empower dealers and does not erode communities. What it does is save lives, restore dignity and bring honesty back into our drug policy.

If the Government truly believes in a health-led response, it must prove it. For me, that starts with the repeal of section 3. It would designate the national drugs strategy as interim, listen to participants of the citizens' assembly, fund harm reduction services properly and most of all, bring the voices of people with lived experience into every decision we make. This is a really welcome debate and I am very interested in hearing the viewpoints of people across the Chamber. The work of the committee is ongoing. We are hearing some incredible stories that are empowering and heartbreaking. The stories we have been replicating for four decades of failed policy not only in this jurisdiction but elsewhere. At the end, we can have a document that contains evidence, reason and the heart of people who have given of their time to appear before the committee. I believe it should be respected. We need a new approach. Nobody is underestimating the task but every single day, lives are being eroded because of what is often the self-medication of trauma, poverty, harm and hurt. If we get this right, we can get it right for the next four to five decades. I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion today. It is a really worthy discussion.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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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.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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One of my first political experiences was canvassing in a block of flats in Dublin. As I walked up the stairwell in the block of flats, I noticed, first, a pair of women's tights on the stairwell. When I got higher, I noticed a discoloured spoon near the top of the stairwell and when I got to the very top, there was a 17-year-old boy lying on the ground, practically unconscious, foaming at the mouth. We did our best to try to help him. It was clear that he had taken heroin and was suffering as a result. A few minutes later, a young boy in a Christian Brothers school uniform walked around the corner and stepped over him like it was nothing. It was very clear to me that unless there was some kind of intervention in this area, in these families, the seven-year-old boy would be in the same position as the 17-year-old boy in a number of years.

There are two major problems with that. First, if there is no intervention on a human level, these individuals are being left to an horrendous life of ill health, addiction and likely death as well. Even if you did not give a damn about the human aspect of this, there is a societal problem too. The sale and supply of these drugs is ravaging whole sections of Irish society with deaths and of people spending decades in prisons as well. There is a real need for the State to actually get serious about drugs. It is not serious about drugs at all. To a certain extent, if many of these individuals in such situations were from the leafy suburbs, it would be an issue of far more importance here in Leinster House. Any drugs policy needs to have as its objective the reduction of harm. That has to be the absolute objective in relation to any issue on an individual basis and on a societal basis as well. Drugs cause harm. The consumption of drugs leads to significant harm, even if there is no criminality involved. Even the consumption of cannabis leads to significant mental health issues. It leads to psychosis and schizophrenia and it can lead to significant physical health problems as well, never mind other drugs. The objective of any policy has to include the reduction of the use of drugs. It is often said in this House that there is a dichotomy and that it is either a health-led issue or a criminal approach and that is not the truth. We could actually have both running in tandem. There is no real health-led element in this Government. In my own constituency, there are no residential rehabilitation beds for young people who want to get off drugs. A 17-year-old kid in my county at the moment who is addicted to drugs and actually wants to get off them has no real help whatsoever.

I have heard other people say that there is evidence in certain areas that the decriminalisation of drugs can lead to increased use, increased damage to health and increased overdoses, as has happened in certain jurisdictions. It is easier for parents to warn their kids off the consumption of drugs by telling them that it is illegal rather than just harmful. The use of illegal drugs on a regular basis is at about 10% within society at the moment, which is far lower than drugs that are completely legal, such as alcohol. It strikes me as strange that we are having a big discussion about the potential decriminalisation of, I think, nearly all drugs at this stage, and at the same time trying to reduce access to cigarettes and vapes, knowing that even these could create difficulty for individuals' health. Our party would not be in support of the decriminalisation of drugs. We believe that the Government actually has a bigger job in making sure that the law is implemented. We have no ships to patrol the seas to check the people who are bringing drugs in on the seas to this country. There are 53 Garda stations in Ireland with no gardaí assigned to them. In any block of apartments in any area where kids are taking drugs on a regular basis, the Garda is not touching that because it simply does not have the resources to do so.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)
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Nobody wants to see people with addiction punished while the dealers get rich. In Limerick, Sr. Concilio in Cuan Mhuire has done an amazing job trying to help people with addiction. The centre has opened a farm and a garden centre to reintroduce people into the workplace. She has done brilliant work. A former hurler from Limerick, Ciaran Carey, has counselling services doing the same, using people who have suffered from addictions themselves, because they know what they talking about. We see people doing all this great work and then we are talking about punishing people who have addictions and we are letting the dealers go free. They go free because they are able to get the drugs into this country, the same way as food can be imported. There is nothing stopping them coming in. We need to try something different. I believe Portugal has tried something slightly different. There, certain drugs have been legalised in a controlled way. Here, it was shown that people who were suffering from serious illnesses could be helped by medicinal cannabis after every other drug had been tried. In some cases, the only thing that actually worked was medicinal cannabis to give that person a quality of life. Under tight legislation and under tight laws, I would like to see those people have a quality of life if that is the only quality of life that is there, if the other drugs are not there to help them. We have legalised drugs in this country through our chemists and others, which are prescribed drugs for people. If none of them works and the medicinal cannabis does work for people to give them a quality of life, I would be for that, as long as it is legislated for tightly and controlled. We should look at the Portugese model. If we take control away from the dealers, we might actually halve the problem. Something has to be done differently. All we are doing at the moment is punishing people who are addicted. Recently, Deputy Conor Sheehan said that Limerick was the cocaine capital of Ireland. It is not.

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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It is the crack cocaine capital of Ireland.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)
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It is not and putting out such a statement about Limerick does not help.

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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It is.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)
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Sorry, we are here to help people. Branding Limerick like that is not nice. We are here to help people all the time, and Deputy Sheehan should not say such things. The whole country has a drug problem. Naming one place by itself is not right

Michael Collins (Cork South-West, Independent Ireland Party)
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The motion invites us to consider a shift in how society addresses drug use, not through the lens of criminal justice but through public health. Decriminalisation does not mean legalisation; rather, it reframes drug use as a health issue, potentially reducing stigma and encouraging access to support services. While there are diverse views on its effectiveness, this debate offers an opportunity to explore evidence-based approaches that prioritise harm reduction and rehabilitation and community well-being.

Deputy O'Donoghue mentioned medicinal cannabis a while ago. I note the journey that one individual had to go to get medicinal cannabis to save her child's life. Today, I wish to acknowledge the extraordinary journey of Vera Twomey, a mother whose courage and determination have left a lasting mark on Ireland's healthcare landscape. Her daughter, Ava Barry, suffered from Dravet Syndrome, a rare and devastating form of epilepsy that caused her to ensure up to 20 seizures a day. Traditional medications failed to ease Ava's suffering and Vera was left with no choice but to seek alternative treatment. That treatment, medicinal cannabis, was not legally accessible in Ireland at that time so Vera did what no parent should ever have to do; she uprooted her family and moved abroad to the Netherlands, where Ava could receive the care she needed. This was not a decision made lightly. It was a desperate act of love driven by the need to save her child's life and it worked. Ava's seizures dropped dramatically and her quality of life improved in ways that conventional medicine had never achieved. Vera did not stop there. She walked literally from Cork to Leinster House twice to demand change. Her campaign was not only for Ava, but for every family facing similar struggles. Eventually, Ava was granted a special licence to access medicinal cannabis in Ireland, a breakthrough that came only after immense public pressure and personal sacrifice. Tragically, Ava passed away in 2023, but her legacy lives on. The inquest into her death led to the recommendation of Ava's protocol, a proposed national framework to guide the safe and compassionate use of unlicensed medicines, including medicinal cannabis. This protocol is a vital step towards ensuring that no other family has to fight so hard for care that should be accessible. Today, I call on every Member to support Ava's protocol and help make it national policy. Vera Twomey's fight was for her daughter but her impact reaches far beyond one family. As I said, I am conscious of the difficulty we had at the time to get that message across to the Government that there are medicines, in this case, cannabis, that could help somebody. If there is a drug out there that will help somebody's health, we should be there willing to help that, but decriminalisation is an area where we are going down a dangerous route on other drugs.

Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the debate on this issue as I have on many other occasions and acknowledge Deputy Sherlock for bringing the motion forward. I also acknowledge how appreciative I am of participating in the debate. I remind my Opposition colleagues that they fought tooth and nail to exclude Government backbenchers from participating in Private Members' Bills being brought forward by the Opposition but on the day that is in it, let us be collegiate. The reason I say that is it is important that people from different perspectives contribute to this debate.

Deputy Kenny's contribution earlier was important because he talked about going on a journey. There are lots of people that we need to expose to the medical evidence. We need to expose them to the work of the citizens' assembly and the Oireachtas joint committee. There is a huge body of work. Deputy O'Donoghue's contribution was important as well. We can have a law-and-order approach on this and a compassionate health-led and, I believe, decriminalised approach to the possession of personal drugs because the people who are the problem here are those who are trafficking, selling and manufacturing large quantities of drugs, making millions of euro out of it and exploiting people with an addiction.

Something I thought most informative from the Oireachtas joint committee hearings was the Portuguese police contribution stating that more of their time was now available to tackle the drug gangs and the people selling drugs in large numbers as a result of not prosecuting small personal possession. The Minister of State mentioned the Department's position on this and in some ways, I wish the joint committee engagement had happened in advance of this debate. We can tease things out at the committee.

Paul Reid clearly said that the citizens' assembly was clear it wished to remove the possession of drugs from the criminal justice system. The difficulty with not removing the criminal sanction is that if we leave any element of discretion under that principle, we will leave ourselves in a difficult position and we will not move forward on it. If, for example, we give gardaí the ability to have discretion as to whether some type of people would be prosecuted or other types of people would not, we would put an unfairness and an injustice at the heart of our drugs policy. We should have an approach were we decriminalise the person and not legalise the substance and if we did that, we would be able to progress a strong health-led approach. I welcome the wording in the programme for Government, which was also welcome by CityWide, the respected organisation, but there is an expectation that we do exactly what Paul Reid said and remove the criminal justice system from the possession of drugs.

Whatever system comes forward on that, we cannot leave any type of discretion with individual gardaí. The reason I say so is that while we could say, "Surely you would leave that to the discretion of the local gardaí", drugs policy will be policed differently in different communities . In some areas, gardaí might penalise people who are sleeping homeless. They might decide that they are going to penalise working communities that have high levels of drug sales when there might be the same level of drug use in middle-class communities. We cannot leave an element of discretion in the law. We would not do it in other areas. I have seen it compared, for example, with the decriminalisation of sex workers where we put the criminal sanction on the person procuring the service, not the person selling it. Let us imagine we had said, "but we will leave a discretion so that the person who was selling the service might be prosecuted". It would not work. If we believe that vulnerable person has an addiction, we should not have the criminal justice system involved in that; we should only have health-led approaches. I urge the Minister of State to examine that section as she goes before the Oireachtas joint committee to examine and tease out all of the provisions.

The joint committee made clear that it wanted to repeal section 3 but it must be replaced. Members were also clear on the point about removing the criminal justice system from possession itself. The key people that we have to target are those who are selling drugs and who are exploiting people who have experienced trauma or living in poverty or who perhaps tried this on a recreational basis and became addicted because of other factors.

Deputy Tóibín stated that it makes it easier for parents to dissuade people from drugs use by it being illegal. If the Deputy were correct, we would not have the drugs problem we have at present.

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Hear, hear.

Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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That is the policy we tried in 1977.

I urge us to continue to work on this issue because there is a lot of cross-party work on it. I acknowledge former Deputy, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, who worked on it as well.

Barry Heneghan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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Aontaím go láidir le go leor rudaí a bhí á rá ag Deputy McAuliffe ansin. Tá ár Dáilcheantair an-ghar dá chéile agus bímid ag obair ar na rudaí céanna. Míle buíochas le Páirtí an Lucht Oibre as an rún seo a thabhairt isteach sa Dáil. Tá sé thar a bheith tábhachtach dom.

I rith an toghcháin bhí mé ag dul ó dhoras go doras agus bhí go leor páirtithe sa Teach seo ag rá go mbeadh siad ar son an rud seo. It is important that what we said during the election is brought in to this House and carried through. Parties across this Chamber said that they would be for decriminalisation and some that said they would be for reducing the current system.

I also acknowledge a former Deputy in my constituency, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, for the work he did on this. In November 2022, the Dáil agreed to move towards the decriminalisation of people who use drugs. We all remember. I have read the record of the Dáil from that time and the strong statements of that day.

Deputy McAuliffe mentioned the citizens' assembly report in January 2024 and the Oireachtas joint committee report in October last, but a lot of what we see in this House is report after report but no action.

As Deputy McAuliffe said about Deputy Tóibín mentioning the legalisation and how it would reduce use, the definition of "insanity" is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome. Clearly, the system we have is not working. I grew up with the current system. I have witnessed the amount of drug use in my Dáil ceantar.

It is important to say that the current system is not working. We need to put in education and preventative measures and treat this like a health issue because these people who have addiction need to be treated as such.

The programme for Government promised a health-led approach. That is the programme for Government I signed up to support. I also favour decriminalisation and the possible legalisation of medical cannabis. Constituents of mine who have been diagnosed with cancer would like to be able to use it as an easier measure. It has been shown it can help with appetite and anxiety for those going through chemo. It is something I will continue to push for.

In the meantime, drug use has been exploding. In 2024, the Health Research Board reported that cocaine accounted for 40% of all treatment cases. We are also seeing a dangerous increase in potency and synthetics. Going back to cannabis, the cannabis currently on the streets has a synthetic cannabinoid sprayed on it. Natural cannabis is not physically addictive but when synthetic cannabinoids, which are generated and sprayed by drug dealers, are used, it makes the stock they are giving to young teenagers physically addictive. Not only that, it is completely frying their brains. People are getting schizophrenia and psychosis, which is really bad. If we could look into what other countries, such as Canada and the Netherlands, have done, and look into reducing the amount and making it a regulated system, it would be very much better for young children and anyone going into it. It would bring them out of criminal connections. That is something we need to look at.

When we talk about reform, it is important to look at Portugal, which Members spoke about, and the change it made to personal possession in 2001. The evidence is clear. It is not just about statements. There is clear evidence that decriminalisation does not lead to a surge in drug use. In the years that followed Portugal's change, the use of most substances fell below the original levels in 2001. What changed was the stigma around it, the access to care, and people stopped dying alone. I have always used this analogy about the homeless crisis when I worked for Peter McVerry, but it goes hand in hand with drug use; if you see people floating down a river, you eventually stop just pulling them out of the river. You go to the top of the river to see why they are getting in there in the first place, to prevent them falling into homelessness and drug us, and to give them that support at the start of their lives. That is something I really support.

Ba mhaith liom míle buíochas a ghabháil le Páirtí an Lucht Oibre for bringing this back in. It is something I signed up to support during the election, with multiple people. I look forward to voting for this motion.

Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I express our gratitude to Members, particularly those in the Labour Party, for their valuable contribution to today's discussion on drug policy. I acknowledge the depth of their interest and commitment to this critical issue. As was stated by the Minister of State, Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor, the Government will not oppose the motion.

This Government remains committed to a health-led approach to drug use, firmly believing that individuals experiencing problematic drug use should be met with compassion, dignity and appropriate care. The health-led approach to drug use is set out in the national drugs strategy. The Government's priority is to develop a successor strategy to cover the period 2026 to 2029. The development of the successor strategy is informed by an evaluation of the current strategy and consultation with stakeholders. In addition, we will take into account the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use, which many have referenced today, the interim report of the Joint Committee on Drugs Use, the programme for Government and the EU drugs strategy.

The Minister for Health and the Minister of State with responsibility for the national drugs strategy, Deputy Murnane O'Connor, published the independent evaluation of the drugs strategy, which was a commitment in the programme for Government. During this evaluation, 68 stakeholders participated in consultation sessions and additional written submissions were received. This inclusive process aimed to capture a broad spectrum of perspectives, including those of service providers, statutory bodies, civil society organisations and individuals with lived experience. The independent evaluation assessed the strategy on four areas; impact, governance, performance and coherence with international policies. I note the opportunities and challenges outlined in the report's findings.

The national drugs strategy has made progress in advancing a health-led approach, particularly through the expansion of harm reduction initiatives, such as naloxone distribution and drug checking services. The evaluation identified a number of positive findings including: the introduction of strategic implementation groups; strengthened interagency collaboration at local level; and improved data collection and monitoring, which enables sight of the changing profile of drug users and how prevalent cocaine use has become in Irish society. The strategy is well aligned with international frameworks, particularly the EU drugs strategy.

The independent evaluation also notes some challenges, including delivery of prevention and early intervention initiatives and the need for alternatives to coercive sanctions. The report presents ten strategic recommendations for the development of an integrated, equitable and outcome-focused strategy. These include the right to help for people who use drugs; providing culturally sensitive and appropriate services for all groups; equitable access to services; and strengthened prevention in early intervention initiatives. These will now be incorporated into the new strategy. To further inform the development of the next strategy, the Department held a number of in-person consultations with key stakeholders. Over 240 people attended the consultation. They included representatives of drugs and alcohol task forces from across the country, drugs service providers and civil society organisations. The consultation report has been published and circulated to the Joint Committee on Drugs Use.

The Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use recognised the value of listening to the citizens of Ireland in relation to our approach to the issue of drugs. The Government has committed to responding to the recommendations of the assembly. The Department of Health has engaged with all relevant Departments to develop a considered response to each of the recommendations, which will in turn be incorporated into the successor national drugs strategy. At the high-level segment of the sixty-seventh session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the Government submitted a Pledge4Action by stating: "The Irish Government commits to carefully consider and respond with urgency to the assembly’s recommendations for reform of the legislative, policy and operational approach to drug use, and to indicate the timeframe for implementing those recommendations which it accepts."

We cannot underestimate the importance of prevention and education in tackling drug use. A wealth of international evidence shows us that by investing in evidence-based drug prevention interventions, we can reduce the negative impact of drug use for the person and their families and communities. The Department of Health has made significant strides regarding its approach to drug prevention. In 2023, a funding scheme totalling €1.5 million was awarded to five projects to implement a range of evidence-based drug prevention interventions across the country. In line with the citizens' assembly, the Department of Health is currently working with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to implement its review of prevention systems project to assess our national approach to drug prevention. We have rolled out training developed by the European Union Drugs Agency and effective approaches to drug prevention to over 50 people.

Drug-related intimidation is a serious and insidious issue impacting individuals, families and communities nationwide. It is a complex problem that manifests differently across regions, often leaving victims fearful and powerless. Intimidation can involve demands for repayment of perceived drug debts or opportunistic extortion. Its relentless natures poses a significant risk to health and well-being. In May, the Minister of State for the national drugs strategy and the Minister for justice launched a major awareness campaign to reduce the stigma surrounding drug-related intimidation and violence by promoting the range of supports available to those affected. The DRIVE project, which is supported by the Departments of Health and justice, An Garda Síochána and many other stakeholders, aims to build community capacity to support victims and tackle the root causes of intimidation and violence. DRIVE reflects the partnership approach at the heart of the national drugs strategy and aligns with the recommendations from the citizens' assembly.

The Government is fully committed in its support for An Garda Síochána's efforts to dismantle criminal gangs involved in the supply of drugs and its work with international partners to tackle the trafficking of drugs for the Irish market. The Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau has seized over €627 million in illicit drugs and made over 1,700 arrests for drug trafficking, money laundering, possession of firearms and other offences since its establishment ten years ago. Last year, the Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill was enacted. This legislation criminalises adults who either force or encourage children to engage in any criminal activity, recognising the lifelong impact on a child of involvement in criminal activity.

Ireland is playing an active role in the development of the next EU drug strategic framework and action plan. The Irish delegation has contributed strongly to thematic debates on various aspects of drug policy at meetings of the EU Horizontal Working Party on Drugs. These meetings will inform the next EU drug strategy which is currently being drafted by the European Commission and is due to be presented by the Commission to member states before the end of the year.

The Government will carefully consider and respond to recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Drug Use. Oversight of the implementation of the programme for Government commitments related to drug policy will be provided by the Cabinet committee on health. A steering group has been established to guide the development of the successor national drug strategy. This process is supported by a reference group comprising service providers and individuals with lived experiences. A draft strategy is expected to be submitted to Minister of State responsible for drugs strategy by December. It is intended that the successor national drug strategy along with a two-year action plan will be published in 2026 with a subsequent action plan envisaged for 2028-2029.

Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)
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This Private Members' motion is very personal for many people across the country. In each and every community, urban and rural, a significant number of people are now using drugs in their daily lives, in their nightlife activities or as their coping mechanism. This motion at the end of the day is about people. It is often a conversation that is taboo. People do not speak about it. I am very proud to be in the Labour Party which has led on this in calling out our country's failed drug policies.

I wish to speak about the great mother who suffered so badly because of the harm of drug taking, overdosing and the lack of support. Ms Christine Kavanagh is a mother from Cork who has lost three sons to drug overdoses. A number of months ago I watched her interview on RTÉ and her deep emotion struck many people across the country. Christine lost her three sons, Dillon, Damien and Leon, to drug overdoses. Christine outlined that more services need to be offered to help people with addiction and mental health. I will just read some of what Christine said, "Mental health always comes with addiction... I just feel there’s nothing being done for people with addiction and mental health [issues]". On a supervised injecting centre for Cork, Christine said, "My two children might have been saved if they were inside in a centre." This story gripped many people's attention - a mother who had been through what no mother should have had to go through, calling for increased supports, a reform of our drug policy and a drug-injecting facility for Cork. That is exactly what I am calling for here. Along with this, a key recommendation of the Citizens' Assembly on Drug Use was a greater focus on prevention and recovery, and greater supports for family and children impacted by drug use.

This motion is also quite personal to me. Two family members of mine have been in rehab facilities in Cork, most recently my own brother this year. I see the amazing work being done in these facilities. However, if a family cannot cope with the exorbitant figure to enter this facility, the individual must wait up to eight months in some instances to be referred by the HSE. I know of a treatment centre in Cork that my brother went to. Some weeks, it only has ten recovering patients because people cannot afford to get in and for those who are waiting to get in, when the time comes around for them to take a place in the recovery programme, they do not want to help anymore. When a person makes a decision to seek help, they need it there and then. They have had a realisation that they want a better life. We should not be placing them on a waiting list because of the affordability of services.

Recently at the Simon Community in Cork, I spoke to the nurse there who told me she started working for Simon 20 years ago when the issue was 100% housing need. She now believes it split 50:50 between drug addiction and housing needs. We make it unequivocally clear that those who sell and distribute drugs should be treated as the criminals they are. They are making easy money off vulnerable people. Based on what some in this House say on this motion, the phrase "running with the hare and hunting with the hounds" is quite appropriate. Some people have offered sympathy and empathy to some families, but along with that they are not man enough to stand up and have a real debate on how we must be progressive on our drug policy and absolutely take a health-led approach to drug users.

Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Decriminalisation is an issue that the Labour Party and my colleagues have been raising consistently over a number of years. I am proud to be in a party that has been pushing consistently for reform of our societal attitudes to drug use, from Pat Rabbitte 30 years ago establishing the drug and alcohol task forces around the country to the steadfast leadership of Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, now our MEP for Dublin, when it has come to the issue of decriminalisation.

I pay tribute to the Tallaght drugs and alcohol task force. I am consistently bowled over by the tremendous work it does on the ground in Dublin South-West, from Tallaght to Whitechurch, in terms of prevention, support outreach and the innovative approaches it takes involving youth work. There is a Connect 4 project in the area that I am particularly impressed with. It is important that these task forces and the projects they are involved in continue to get the funding they need over the coming years.

As others have said our motion today is not even about drugs. At its heart this is a motion about people, vulnerable people, marginalised people and people who are sick, and the value we place on their lives or more accurately the lack of value because if we truly valued the lives of people suffering from addiction, we would have changed our approach long ago. Dealing with the issue of addiction and drugs solely through the criminal justice system has not worked. I do not think anyone in this House would argue with that. I suppose it could depend on a person's views of the outcomes we hope to achieve in our response to drug use and addiction, but our criminal justice approach has been indicative of a State and, if we are honest, a society that for a long time would prefer not to acknowledge the dignity and the humanity of those who have unfortunately found themselves dependent on drugs. It has allowed us to brush the issue under the rug and forget about them.

However, drug use is so prevalent now that it has become difficult for people to ignore. It is in every town and village across the country, as we have heard. It is in every community, every workplace, every family and every club. To criminalise drug use is to completely misunderstand the nature of addiction. Of course, we can slap someone who is suffering from addiction with a charge or a custodial sentence and pretend that will solve a problem; it simply will not. Drug use is just not a choice for people who are suffering from addiction and punishing them for their addiction is absolutely not going to deter them; on the contrary all it does is push them further and further to the margins. That marginalisation, particularly among neglected communities and which is often multigenerational, is very often what fuels drug use in the first place. We need a genuine health-led approach, one that prioritises harm reduction and recovery, and supports people out of addiction.

The World Health Organization now favours decriminalisation of people who use drugs. Ultimately this is a sensible approach. It is the effective approach. It is the approach that will save lives - lives that have been undervalued for too long. It is about time we changed it.

Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal East, Labour)
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We are asking the Government to listen to this Chamber, the people's Chamber. It should listen to its own senior backbenchers if it will not listen to the Opposition, follow the data and change its drug policy. We know it is listening to tech bros running op eds about trying to rebrand itself as a government that can deliver on infrastructure. It needs to deliver on people suffering with drug addiction. The data is there. If it is going to be the government of delivery, then it needs to prove it and deliver what we are asking for - fixed and mobile consumption centres. It should not take nine years to deliver one, like it did when we first proposed one in 2015 which was only opened last year. If it is the new face of delivery, it needs to deliver for people suffering from drug addiction.

Criminalisation of people who use drugs has not worked full stop. It has been an absolute abject failure. That is not even the discussion any more. We know the issue is more acute in working class areas, but is not restricted to them. It cuts through age, demographics, class and constituency; it is everywhere. The Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, has been at pains to tell us all that our prisons cannot handle the levels of people they face, yet by not decriminalising possession of drugs for personal use, we are still seeing 10,000 people arrested each year.

Sixty-seven percent of all those arrests are for personal use, which is an absolute failure. It is not as if we do not know there is another way to do this. We have spoken about the Portuguese model. It is in place and the data are available. The WHO, as has been said, favours decriminalisation.

The Labour Party, through Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and Deputy Marie Sherlock, our health spokesperson, have led and continue to lead on this. As Mr. Ó Ríordáin said in an interview last week, the truth of the matter is that our State policy over the years has had no respect for those who use drugs, no empathy for them in respect of how they became addicted and no concern for what happens to them once addicted. For every other policy, whether in government or opposition, we try to base our thinking on data. That is what the Labour Party is doing here, yet the Government is basing its drugs policy on feelings and moralism. This is absolutely wrong and needs to end. The template exists and it can be delivered.

If we as legislators cannot find a way to tackle the stigma head on, we will continue to see a high level of drug-induced deaths. In 2021, our rate of drug-induced deaths among those between 16 and 64 was four times the EU average. In 2024, the European Drug Report ranked Ireland first among reported EU countries. There were 354 drug-poisoning deaths in Ireland last year, which is twice the number of people killed in road traffic accidents, which we all know is a national tragedy.

How many Dáil statements did we have for the victims of road deaths last year? We had three, and rightly so. How many did we have for those poor people who lost their lives to drug-induced poisoning? We had none. That shows where this Government’s priorities are in terms of tackling deaths and addiction by drug use. It has to change. We have offered the Government a motion multiple times. It should please follow through and deliver for people suffering from addiction.

Deputies:

Hear, hear.