Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on the important issue of the national drugs strategy. I do not support the motion but I will support the amendment tabled by the Fine Gael Party because it best reflects the current crisis we are in. Chronic underfunding has been a feature of this area. It is one thing to have a strategy but one needs to look at the reality to date with the national drugs strategy from 2001 to 2008. During that period the Exchequer purse was overflowing but the NDS was crippled by underfunding. Under the 2008 budget the finance afforded to the drugs initiative-young people's facilities and services fund, which includes the NDS, is set at €64 million. Let us contrast that figure with the horse and greyhound racing fund which is to receive €76.6 million. It is clear where the Government's priorities lie.

The Health Service Executive provides a total budget of only €83 million to support drug and alcohol services. It already has made cuts in the area of drug treatment and has reneged on promises to deliver. While the HSE has plans to develop drugs services, it is not intended to do so until the end of 2008 and even then they will only be progressed if the HSE has met its overall financial targets by that time. Everyone looks at how things appear in the media. We all know the reality in this House of how likely it is that this will happen. The way things are going, there will be no service development at all.

The HSE recruitment ban, or "employment controls", which is the HSE's preferred term, is preventing the replacement of staff who have left existing drug treatment services and, in addition, it is preventing the introduction of new much needed services even where funding for same has been approved. By its own admission the HSE is short more than 350 detoxification and rehabilitation beds and it has fewer than half the beds required.

Much has been made of the recent cocaine awareness campaign but the feeling locally is that it was not hard hitting enough. To make an impact we need something akin to the seat belt awareness campaign. We must not be overly reliant on billboard-driven awareness campaigns either. Solid educational modules in schools and initiatives through sports clubs, business, trade unions, professional bodies, etc. all could make a positive contribution.

In the new national drugs strategy from 2009 we must ensure a number of criteria are met and that funding to frontline services is sufficient and secure. It is important that staff should not be unduly hindered by having to complete endless evaluations and reports. Successful pilots must be mainstreamed without undue delay and with the additional funding that is necessary. Service delivery must be integrated and joined up. The user's first point of contact, whatever agent or agency that happens to be, should be in a position to line everything else up, that is, to make the necessary referrals to treatment, social welfare, accommodation or employment supports or other such facilities, and to ensure they are delivered to the user. Waiting lists for treatment must be eliminated. Support must be on hand and available during the crucial window when a user decides to seek it.

In terms of supply reduction, the recent growing number of drugs seizures is very welcome but we must remember that is also an indication of a growing drugs market. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has indicated that the "dial to stop drug dealing" scheme is to be rolled out. My party has been calling for that since 2006 and it must happen without further delay. As with the successful pilot in Blanchardstown it must be a confidential non-Garda line. It is this characteristic that allows it to serve as a bridge between communities and the Garda. Under the new NDS, communities and joint policing committees should have a role to inform the allocation of Garda resources and Garda operations, especially those of the national and local drugs squads. In addition, a constructive link between communities and the Criminal Assets Bureau should be developed.

The Minister with responsibility for the national drugs strategy, who is based in the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, must take responsibility for all aspects of the delivery of the new NDS and he or she must have real clout in the important Departments of Finance, Health and Children, Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and Education and Science and with the HSE.

I wish to sound a note of caution on the extension of the NDS to include alcohol. Any move to include alcohol under the remit of the NDS must be given very careful consideration. While there are obvious advantages to the inclusion of alcohol in a national drugs strategy, such as for the treatment of polydrug users involving alcohol, there is a real danger that illicit drugs would get lost alongside the nation's mammoth and culturally entrenched problems with the legal drug of alcohol. Funding to the NDS would have to be increased by many multiples if such an extension were to be at all feasible. Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh, fá choinne an deis sin a rá sa dhíospóireacht seo.