Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Like Senator Ruane, I find it difficult not to be emotional while speaking on this Bill in this Chamber along with Senator Ruane, Senator Kelleher, who has worked in the homeless services in Cork, and the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, who has been so supportive of this legislation. We have people from the Ana Liffey trust in the Visitors Gallery, including Marcus Keane and Tony Duffin, who have spearheaded the campaign for this legislation for quite a long time. I had the Minister of State's role in the previous Government, as she knows. When I first came across the Ana Liffey project and listened to the humanity of what they were trying to achieve, it was very difficult to find any logical reason this city and country would not pursue what other cities and countries have pursued. This is not, as others have said, a pioneering facility and, in fact, there are 88 such facilities across Europe, as well as one in Sydney and others in North America.

The fundamental point is that these facilities will save lives. We have the third highest overdose rate in Europe. We have people today injecting in alleys in the open air, which is extremely dangerous. They are liable to contract any type of blood-borne disease, such as hepatitis C or HIV, but they are also likely to die. This reality was brought home to me during the 1916 commemorations when there were two deaths of young men in Dublin city centre within a stone's throw of the GPO, one, ironically enough, in the toilets of Connolly Station, where a young man overdosed and died, and another young man overdosed and remained for two nights in Foley Street in the north inner city. It did not make the news at all.Nobody noticed because nobody cared because, on some level, Irish society has decided it is their own fault. We have a mentality of victim-blaming when it comes to heroin overdose or heroin use. The different types of media reporting is remarkable; if a student dies as a result of taking a pill in a nightclub, all the commentary will be about the future that young person could have had and why politicians are not doing more. However, if someone dies of an overdose in a toilet in Dublin or in Cork, there will not be one column inch or one report about it.

There are some journalists who need to be congratulated for the way they have supported this Bill - Stuart Clarke from Hot Press and Cormac O'Keeffe from the Irish Examiner were both very supportive of this initiative. However, there have been others in the Irish media who continually dehumanise and degrade those in addiction, using terminology which dehumanises them and undermines them. They perpetuate this problem and they will misrepresent what we are trying to do in this Chamber.

I want to congratulate people from the Minister of State's own party, including Deputies Paschal Donohoe, Leo Varadkar and Frances Fitzgerald, who backed this idea from the beginning. I also congratulate people from my own party such as Deputy Joan Burton, Deputy Jonathan O'Brien from Sinn Féin who was very supportive of this from the very beginning, Independent Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan, and Deputy Jack Chambers from Fianna Fáil, who made a submission in support to the national drugs strategy.

This initiative will save lives. On that basis I do not see how anybody can logically have any issue with it. Obviously the regulations will have to be investigated carefully. For many people it is a jump into a radical new way of thinking when it comes to drug policy. However, I would ask anyone who has a question about this if it was their brother or sister - because it is someone's brother or sister - or if it was their father, mother or child, where would they want them to inject if they were sucked into hopeless addiction. Would it be behind a skip or in a toilet, or in a facility which is surrounded by services in a compassionate and more safe manner? That is the question. Nobody has ever died in an injecting centre anywhere in the world. It is the first step on the road to recovery.

This will fail if all we give people is a room to inject. It has to be a suite of services so people will be able to take that first step on the road to recovery. It is remarkable that no matter where I go, people quietly approach me. They tip me on the shoulder and thank me for what I have done on injecting centres, saying their son or their brother had died of an overdose, but they are ashamed to say it. If this was any other health issue we would have a packed Gallery here, there would be a rally outside because people want to give voice to the fact that people are literally dying on the streets. However, they do not do it over heroin overdoses because we have continually managed to dehumanise this debate and blame the victim.

I congratulate the Minister of State for taking this on and internalising it and driving it forward. I am so proud to stand here with other people in this Chamber who are making this happen. There are other parts of the country crying out for a centre of this nature but this is a good, decent thing we are doing today. Sometimes it is not easy in politics to stand up for the person who is most vulnerable, who will be demonised and dehumanised in Irish media and often in politics as well. Today politics is actually standing up for that individual. Lives will be saved and the Minister of State is to be commended for that. I cannot wait until this legislation is passed and we can have a centre that is open and we realise that all of us collectively were right in pursuing that, and I am sure that it will be the first of many. I congratulate the Minister of State and support her 100% in the passage of this Bill.