Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to put on record what a wonderful moment it is in our Oireachtas to finally pass this Bill. I acknowledge the members of the Ana Liffey Drug Project who are in the Visitors Gallery. They have been working over a number of years to make this day a reality. I thank the Minister of State for taking this on and for bringing it to today's point at which it will finally pass and become law. Notwithstanding the comments of my colleague from Fianna Fáil, this has had pretty much universal political support across the spectrum in both Houses. Perhaps we are maturing as a country in terms of drug law. Senator Lynn Ruane and I are moving on 31 May a Bill that will hopefully once again achieve wide-ranging political support to take the next step in the decriminalisation of the drug user.

I want to put on record the name of a man called Robert Keyes, who died on 8 November 2015 in St. Audeon's Park in Dublin of a fatal overdose. When the person who came across his body telephoned the emergency services, the person said that it was "just another junkie". This man's mother came forward recently and spoke about her son lovingly and caringly in the media and said that nobody is a "junkie" in this country. What the Minister of State is doing today is ensuring through this life-saving measure that we bring humanity back into our drug policy and that we finally move beyond the situation in which anybody would decide to dehumanise or denigrate another person with that disgusting term. Every citizen of this State is entitled to humane and compassionate treatment. If somebody is hopelessly crippled with an addiction, he or she deserves the care and compassion of this State. This injecting centre legislation provides this in order that nobody else has to go to a park, behind a skip, into an alleyway or into a playground to inject themselves in such a harmful manner. We will establish a facility that will ensure people's lives can be saved, that they will not contract hepatitis C or HIV and that we can look on these individuals as people with names. Perhaps it is time for a names project such the one in the United States for people with AIDS. We have the third highest overdose rate in Europe. Perhaps people who are affected by this or whose families are affected such as the people who approach me and say their son or brother died of an overdose but will not say so publicly can begin to speak their names in a loving way because they are or were not junkies. They are human beings afflicted by addiction. This is the first step along the road towards a proper way to tackle this issue in a humane and compassionate way. I congratulate the Minister of State on taking it on, dealing with it with such humanity and dignity and seeing it through to this day. We speak in an empty Chamber, but that does not mean that what we are doing is not absolutely historic and will not save lives.