Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I support the motion introduced by Fine Gael. However, I am always concerned by the huge emphasis placed on illegal drugs. I work in the third level education sector. For every third level student whose life is damaged by illegal drugs, ten are probably damaged, psychologically or physically, by alcohol. I say this as a lead-in to supporting the Fine Gael motion. As one who is more than partial to taking occasional drops of alcohol, I am acutely aware that alcohol will devastate more families and more people than all the illegal drugs put together. There is overwhelming evidence of this.

There is an increasing rate of admissions of people under 25 to psychiatric hospitals because of alcohol. We must examine the general question of mood altering substances. I am not suggesting liberalising the law on any substance but to pretend that we can make a distinction between legal mood altering substances like alcohol and illegal mood altering substances is to retreat from the extremely important fact that we appear to have an increasing number of people in our society who will use mood altering substances knowing that the quantity and intensity of their usage, whether they be legal or illegal, will damage them physically and mentally.

Apart from the legitimate issues that are raised in this motion about the appalling breach of promises by Government, there can have been few more headlined promises than that of 2,000 additional gardaí on the streets. The cynical retreat from this is worthy of the most unequivocal condemnation. The little phrase, inserted at the end of the manifesto saying everything was subject to economic conditions, has been repeatedly used by the Government to justify the multiplicity of broken promises. The difference between Government and the Opposition at the election was that the Government had information at its disposal before the election that made clear its promises were indefensible. They knew what was happening to tax revenue yet issued a manifesto and inserted a little get-out clause, the substance of which they knew to be true. One of the promises was the 2,000 additional gardaí.