Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I do not understand what the Minister of State means when he refers to the ring-fencing issue. The measure proposed in the Fine Gael amendment would benefit his Department and various spending allocations within it. Is it his view that it is a good idea to funnel additional money into drugs related schemes, particularly in communities about which other colleagues have spoken? This is the only chance we will get to do that. Irrespective of the seven-year aspect, this is a new source of money which will come back into the coffers of the State.

The Minister of State makes the lame argument that the amendment would lead to more bureaucracy and additional administrative pressures. The Department has already conceded on that point with regard to the drugs courts, albeit in the form of a pilot scheme. A new drugs court has been established to help expedite the cases of those who come before the courts for crimes relating to drug habits. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is much maligned in both Houses but it responded fairly and swiftly in this area by establishing a drugs court with a small administrative bureaucracy. The same principle applies to this issue.

The Minister of State's second argument is that the money need not be ring-fenced because it will always be there. If the money goes into a big black hole in the Department of Finance it will be lost to other schemes. On the other hand, there is a connection between money gained through drug related crime and funding of drug-related community initiatives. The Minister of State represents a constituency similar to that of Senator Tuffy and myself. He must appreciate the psychological effect of being able to point to a new facility in a disadvantaged area and telling the people of the area that the money for the facility came from those who had been trying to kill their children over the previous ten years. It is important for the State to make the bold assertion that funding for community facilities has come back from drugs barons into disadvantaged communities. This is an argument of justice as much as anything else. The people who are most affected by drugs crime will see the proceeds of crime being put to good use. For the State to reaffirm itself and tell communities it cares is as important an issue as the issue of finance.

In recent years, the Government has dramatically increased funding for treatment programmes, particularly community led programmes. That is to be welcomed. Nevertheless, one of the key proposals in the White Paper on volunteerism was to move from annual to multi-annual budgeting so that community groups would know, over a three or four-year period, what they are going to get. If funding was derived in the way proposed in amendments Nos. 1 and 2, the Minister of State could tell disadvantaged communities what they will receive over a period of several years instead of having them rely on year to year funding as they do currently. I ask the Minister of State to look again at this issue.

Almost all of the drug treatment programmes in my own constituency continually ask that money coming back from the Criminal Assets Bureau be ring-fenced. This is something the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform would want to support if the considerations of the Department of Finance in the matter could be put to one side.