Déirdre de Búrca (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Curran, to the House and wish him well in his new portfolio. I was impressed by his response to some of the earlier contributions and I may cover some of the same ground. That the Minister of State would use this debate as part of the consultation process is a good way to benefit from the various perspectives that Senators will articulate on the national drugs strategy. I thank the Progressive Democrats for tabling this Private Members' motion. As we are starting to look at the next phase of our new national drugs strategy we should, as the Minister of State has said, evaluate how we have done so far, the approaches we have used and look at some fresh thinking that may be required in particular areas.

Reference was made to the "Prime Time" programme on the issue of drugs. The message I took from that was that policy makers and politicians need to be courageous in their approach to the problem of tacking drug abuse and substance abuse generally in society because it appears the older prohibition model has its limits. If we are to seriously tackle some of the social and crime related problems attached to substance abuse, we may have to look at a model other than prohibition. It does not always have huge social support and much public education and so on is needed. I hope that in the new drugs strategy that thinking will be reflected.

I will be quoting from the recommendations of the Merchants Quay Project which has developed much expertise in the area of working with drug abusers. It has welcomed the inclusion of alcohol into a single national drugs strategy. Most members will be aware that a motion was agreed by the Seanad last year on the issue of alcohol abuse in society. It is a good idea to integrate the issue of alcohol.

Alcohol is the drug of choice for many Irish people. We do not think of it as a drug because we use it so widely in so many social contexts. It is one that needs to be addressed within the drugs strategy in the same way as other substances that are being abused. The point made by the Merchants Quay Project is that appropriate resources and funding need to be provided to facilitate service development and staff upskilling and not to assume that alcohol can be included and that the resources that have been used to tackle other substances can be automatically applied to address the issue of alcohol abuse.

The submission from the Merchants Quay Project highlights some of the structural and reporting mechanism changes it would like to see. These are sensible suggestions. It seeks clear formal mechanisms for ongoing consultation with drug users and users of drug services. That would be a welcome element of any new drugs strategy. The Minister of State and his predecessor have been involved in the national consultation process which has involved consulting former drug addicts and those using and providing State services, as well as medical experts. The expertise and the experience that substance abusers have of the services is invaluable in terms of ongoing evaluation of the services. That those clear structures would be established as part of the process of implementing the new drugs strategy would be welcome. The timely reporting of data submitted to the national treatment reporting system has been mentioned. Timely reporting is important. It is impossible to assess how the strategy is being implemented and to respond to new trends emerging unless that data are available.

The Merchants Quay Project has called for needle exchange to be included and counted as a treatment intervention within the national drug treatment reporting system. I hope the Minister will consider that recommendation and also the establishment of a drug trend monitoring system as a matter or priority. The level of cocaine use has exploded in recent years. It appears the profile of people who abuse cocaine is very different from that of those who abuse heroin and so on. Research has identified that it is predominantly the 15 to 34 age group who abuse cocaine. The side effects and the problems associated with cocaine use are different from other drugs. The drug trend monitoring system is a good idea and it is to be hoped that it is one that will be established with the new drugs strategy.

The issue of funding has also been highlighted by the Merchants Quay Project. This is the key issue. It states that the following are essential in regard to funding. There should be a single funding channel for the national drugs strategy, annual funding for the regional development task force and also the local development drugs task force and funding for projects for three years. There should be ring-fenced budgets for each pillar of the national drugs strategy, full cost recovery for projects paid in advance and a commitment to multi-annual funding to facilitate proactive service planning and delivery. I realise that in difficult budgetary situations it is not always possible to do that but that is the ideal in terms of funding certainty. It also seeks regular reporting on the progress of the strategy. I am interested to hear whether the Minister of State has plans in regard to regular reporting. It also recommends that the Oireachtas committee on drugs link in to existing national drugs strategy structures.

In the area of harm reduction, some of the suggestions made by the Merchants Quay Project are interesting. In terms of the new thinking, one of its new proposals is that the new drugs strategy would look at establishing a pilot safer injecting facility or facilities in Dublin city and, perhaps, in one or two other cities with a view to assessing the impact of such a service on drug related harm. Certainly the "Prime Time" programme, which looked at the issue of drug abuse, featured a number of models of this kind, based in the Netherlands, and which appeared to be successful in terms of harm reduction. While they do not cure the problem or wean the users off the drugs, they are injecting in a much safer way and avoid many of the problems, infections and diseases that go with hard drug abuse.

The Merchants Quay Project is also seeking a full spectrum of outreach services for hard-to-reach groups, better access to primary health care for drug users and more immediate access to mental health services for drug users experiencing acute mental health issues. I hope the Minister of State will take all these points on boards in putting the new strategy together.

The Minister of State mentioned prevention in his contribution. The Green Party believes the targeted Garda anti-drug use programmes in schools and third level institutions are very important. We hope the programmes will continue and that the Garda will be properly resourced to provide them. We also recommend that the Garda be given search powers along the lines of the new random breath testing model for drink driving to allow for random searches at particular places, times and events where senior gardaí believe there is a risk of drugs being present.