Rónán Mullen (Independent)

Tá céad míle fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. Chomh maith le daoine eile anseo, ba bhreá liom tréaslú leis an méid atá le rá aige faoi chúrsaí drugaí agus alcólachas. Molaim a chur chuige agus a mhodh múinte freisin.

While I welcome this debate there are aspects of it I do not welcome. I worry about our tendency to discuss these matters in a frenzied moment when events occur in which the media is interested. Anything that touches on human life or death, happiness and fulfilment, or despair and destruction is deeply important. Certain things provoke debate and outrage for a while but then the circus moves on, which raises questions about our attitude to human life and its meaning and how sacred or otherwise it is. It took the tragic death of a young celebrity, for example, to get us into a new mode of discussing this issue. Although it was a discretionary decision to send the Taoiseach's aide-de-camp to the funeral, and I would always welcome such gestures of charity and solidarity, other funerals caused by a similar problem took place without the same high profile intervention. That suggests that even Government and legislators are not immune to the media frenzy but that should not be so.

By contrast I welcome the Minister of State's measured approach. He resisted the tendency to overstate the problem or to make right wing, irrational, rabid statements of the kind that can go down well. I have reservations, however, about the way we turn to mantras at a time like this, such as, "cross-departmental approaches" or the "importance of education" or the "need for investment". Money, education and joined-up thinking are necessary but we need something deeper.

We must examine ways to tackle the demand side of the drug problem but before we do so we must ask ourselves why this demand exists. This is where people become uncomfortable because we have to acknowledge that there is a deep social and cultural malaise at the heart of this issue. Alcohol abuse, drug abuse and suicide are sad symptoms of how cheap life has become in Irish society.

Alcohol has been a problem in Ireland for a long time and it is worth reflecting on how it was counteracted in the past. Those with an interest in history will remember the etchings of Hogarth depicting Gin Lane and the horrible destruction wreaked by addiction. He managed to begin the process of raising people's awareness of the misery associated with alcohol addiction. Fr. Theobald Matthew's temperance movement in Ireland was driven by the moral certainty that alcoholism was wreaking an evil on society and the need for people to become united around moral values of self restraint for the sake of themselves and others. This is the kind of movement that could not exist today because people are scared of the concept of morality and that they might be seen as judgmental. Therein lies the problem. Many people are profoundly lost on a spiritual and philosophical level and this is illustrated by the problems of suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse. It is not surprising that some people lost on a spiritual, psychological or philosophical level might seek comfort from pain in temporary highs offered by alcohol and drugs. If this is the case then telling people to "just say no" will not work.

In the past the church was good at telling people what to believe but was not so good at telling them why to believe what was proposed. It is not surprising that over time, with greater freedom, many people rejected what was proposed. The State risks making the same mistake. Liberal voices focusing on harm-reduction strategies will not work and will simply contribute to the ambivalence surrounding drug taking. We must move away from talk of tough sentencing and targeting drug pushers. We must also move away from talk of investment, education and cross-departmental approaches because, ultimately, the State and its systems cannot solve this problem. The solution must come from people's hearts and it must be a deeply felt community response, perhaps similar to the response in the North to the killing of Paul Quinn. Communities there have come together in a deep sense of outrage and are united in the need to confront the issue. There is no suggestion that some people may choose to kill and that it is an individual choice. There is no room for individual choice when dealing with crises and when addressing issues that may cost lives.

We must move towards a unified, consistent discourse that does not shy from talking about morality. I do not mean this in a narrow religious sense but in a shared social sense, in which religious organisations will be willing and welcome partners in dialogue. Rather than tell people that they should not take drugs the State must convince people why they should not take drugs. Life is sacred; this must be the starting point in this matter and the wider message is that we owe a deep debt of responsibility to others.

These days there is a politically correct emphasis on self-actualisation but this causes confusion rather than strengthening people's sense of responsibility to each other. I agreed with some of the comments of my colleague, Senator Bacik, but I was not clear how she felt about legalising harder drugs as she confined her comments to cannabis. The notion of handing out leaflets at night clubs informing people of the danger of taking ecstasy without water suggests to me that there is a disastrous defeatism in the air. The comparison made with the ineffectual nature of telling people to abstain from sex to avoid sexually transmitted diseases illustrates just how defeatist some people are about people's capacity to amend their behaviour and live more healthy lives. One could argue that this is the pro-choice mentality gone mad.

We must ask ourselves some fundamental questions. Do we believe in people's power to transform their behaviour? If not, why do we emphasis the importance of education? Things are actually the other way round; people can change their behaviour but to do so need leadership through education with a strong moral message at its core. There is no room for ambivalence, with some people discussing drugs as though they were a matter of personal choice about which one must simply be careful. While this attitude is responsible one cannot hope to use it to get the message through to young people at a formative stage in their lives that drugs are not the way to go.

We need a discourse on the meaning of human life and the capacity of people to change. It is ironic that this discussion is taking place while denominational schooling is being attacked because I would have thought the ideal of such organisations is to teach self-belief and an ability to value one's own life and that we could learn from them.

The State must get off the pulpit and stop discussing bland elements of this issue such as money and education. It must stop giving mixed messages on drugs and particularly alcoholism. Regarding alcoholism, we must begin to tackle the use of alcoholic drinks in the sponsorship of sporting events and drink advertising in general. This may hurt and vested interests are involved but if we really believe life is sacred and alcohol ruins lives and damages communities we should not be afraid to make hard choices, even when they cost the Exchequer.

We must move away from the illusion that free education has made us all capable of making responsible choices. This is only the beginning as many people are deeply incurious about the meaning of their lives and their potential. The State must participate, and encourage voluntary groups, in spreading the message to people that life is sacred and that responsible choices are essential for the sake of the human community. This involves a little known and little respected concept known as self-denial.