Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Ruane for her excellent opening speech and the Civil Engagement group for facilitating the debate on the Bill, which the Labour Party and other parties across the House support.

In a situation like this, it is very tempting to play the political ball, but we should not do that today. There is a reason this Bill may not necessarily pass Second Stage. I would rather not focus on that. We need to focus less on the politics and more on the humanity of what we are trying to achieve. This is the most important Bill that will come before this Oireachtas and this is probably the most important speech I will make during my time in the Seanad. If what I and others say manages to change the mind of one person who has the potential to allow this Bill to pass further, then I do not think I will ever say anything more important.

Drugs are everywhere in Irish society. There are gardaí, members of the Judiciary and politicians, including Cabinet members, who have in the past taken illegal drugs. The same is true of teachers, nurses and journalists. However, none of us would suggest that they are criminals for taking illegal drugs at one point. The reality is that this war on drugs is actually a war on poor people. They are the ones who are criminalised. As Senator Ruane quite rightly said, we are criminalising marginalisation.

When I spent a short time as Minister of State with responsibility for equality and drugs, I met groups representing the LGBT community and people with disabilities and those advocating for Traveller rights who told me that those who are disconnected are more likely to fall into addiction. Of course, we know that deprivation causes people to fall into addiction. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety; the opposite of addiction is connection. We will not connect people with mainstream society if we give them criminal sanctions. It is just not working. I plead with anybody who thinks it is working or is pushing people away from addiction or drug use to take a trip to any court, particularly the drug court. What he or she will find is a courtroom full of sick of people. Worse than that, they will find a courtroom full of sick poor people.

There is a level of power involved in this and it is not just politics that is to blame for not taking action sooner. We have come a long way in a short time.It is only a few short weeks ago when the Minister of State sat in that chair and together we passed, without amendment, the injecting centre legislation - ground-breaking stuff that will save lives. There is a common perception, a common mistrust and a dehumanisation of the addict. We all know the names of those groups I named earlier used to be called. I refer to the LGBT community, the Traveller community, people with disabilities, asylum seekers and poor people. They were disparaging names, dehumanising names and undermining names that are not used in common parlance any more but one can still call somebody a junkie any hour of the day on any media outlet and get away with it. One could probably use it in this Chamber and in the other Chamber and not be censured for it.

A young man died of an overdose in St. Audeon's Park in November 2015. The person who found him dead rang the emergency services and said "It is just another junkie". What we are really dealing with here is power and the power that we think people in addiction and their families have. What we have managed to do by criminalising them is to make them full of shame. They will not come forward and talk about the services they need. They will not come forward and talk about the lives they are living because criminalisation is shaming them. We are shaming people into graves. We have the third highest overdose rate in Europe. If the system was working our statistics would show something completely different.

Senator Ruane, the Civil Engagement group, other parties and me are not trying to engage in some liberal loonyfest. Many of us believe in having a drug-free society but we are realists and we know that drugs are everywhere and that people are going to continue to take them but it is how we deal with the person who is sucked into addiction that is the key. Do we have that person interface with a garda, a judge in a court room or the prison system or do we say the person is better off dealing with a doctor, counsellor or suasion service? Do we think a young person from a broken home in a disadvantaged area who begins to dabble in drug use and who gets a criminal sanction will change his or her ways? If I got a criminal conviction as a teenager or in my early 20s I would probably say "That is me done. Society has just made a decision on me", but I would also know that I have only got a criminal sanction because I am poor. What we are trying to deal with here is one of the biggest killers in Irish society. It is also one of the biggest lies. The war on drugs is a lie. It cannot be won. It is a war on people - a certain type of people. When we talk about decriminalisation, which is a word that gets us in trouble all the time because people think we are talking about legalisation, which we are not.