Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Pat Carey, to the House. I am pleased he is present for the debate as he is a former Minister of State with responsibility for this area.

I raise this matter because the use of heroin and other drugs is on the increase. The Minister of State, Deputy Curran, is on record as saying that this week in the other House. I am concerned that a reduction in the programme funding for local drugs task forces and the national drugs strategy will have an impact on the provision of services at a time when drug use is on the increase. I will outline some figures from Cork city to illustrate the point. In 2004 there were just four seizures of heroin. In 2006 there were 77 and last year there were 159. To date this year there have been 165 heroin seizures. That is a tribute to the great work of the Garda in the Cork area. We have a heroin epidemic and a drug use problem that we have failed to get a handle on, despite the national drugs strategy and the fact that we have invested huge sums of money.

I commend the Minister of State, Deputy Carey, on the part he played when he had responsibility for that area. He did a very good job. Cuts have been made to the programme of 11% and 8%. Regional drugs task forces are being affected. That will have a profoundly negative impact on what we are all trying to do, namely, eliminate the use of drugs, avoid deaths and put the drug dealers out of business.

The national drugs strategy is predicated on a number of investment and funding pillars. Will the aims of the strategy, to which we all subscribe, be hindered by the reduction? There will be an impact on the programmes we offer and the people whom they are meant to support.

"Morning Ireland" did a good programme yesterday on the Ballyfermot youth service. Jerry McCarthy said there may be a recession in the country but there is no recession in drugs. He is dead right. Some funding for the provision of youth services has been cut altogether while in other cases it has been reduced. The number of projects has been reduced and some projects have been amalgamated. We all accept we are in a difficult time.

Having taught leaving certificate applied courses in school and been involved in community associations, I subscribe to the view that one must be at the coalface in communities. Local gardaí came to the school and that created a great buzz and excitement among the young people but it led to experimentation. I suspect the Minister of State, Deputy Carey, might agree that the best approach is for one to be immersed in the community and involved at that level. We successfully fought against the use of drugs, albeit to a limited degree. This cut is an abandonment of what the Minister of State signed up to as a Minister when he had responsibility for the drugs strategy and what we worked to achieve with him. We are now seeing an abandonment of the joined-up thinking and collaboration between the Departments of Health and Children, Education and Science, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs and Arts, Sport and Tourism.

At a time when drug use is on the increase, it is important that the impact of cuts in this area would be reduced and that we would see them reversed. I am not being political in this, but as the Minister of State is well aware, one death is too many, one person going to jail for whatever reason connected with drug use is wrong and we must do everything in our power to tackle the problem. I hope the reply will be positive.