Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I compliment the Government on moving with dispatch in identifying substances sold in head shops that are proposed to be banned. While complimenting it on its speed, I wonder whether it is going far enough. In that regard, I prefer what the Labour Party has suggested in its draft planning and development Bill, namely, that we would consider changing our planning laws to require a change of use for premises and that people would have to apply for planning permission to set up these head shops. The Labour Party made a similar proposal in the past in regard to sex shops and is proposing to take these two issues together. That is much more courageous but I wonder whether even that is going far enough. It is not beyond the limits of human ingenuity for us to devise some piece of legislation that will allow us not just to prevent the establishment of these places in the future but to target the ones currently in existence. There seems to be a timidity at Government level about that. I do not believe it will work. If we identify a set of substances some other new set of substances will appear on the horizon and we will be eternally playing catch-up. I ask for further consideration of that and this forum might be a useful place to have the debate as to the precise mechanisms we should come up with to target not just the head shops but the people who offer home deliveries of these substances and so on.

I note Senator Bacik raised the issue of the need for a debate on education, which I raised yesterday along with others. I would be grateful for a debate on that issue. As somebody who teaches personal development in a third level college I recognise that when one is teaching self-esteem as part of the module one wonders if one fails one's students will one be contributing to lowering their self-esteem. A serious issue arises about how colleges go about——