Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is timely that we have a debate in the Chamber on the health impacts of drug use and misuse in this country. We have had many debates in recent weeks on the Garda and criminal justice response to drugs in our communities. Any time I have had the opportunity to participate in those debates, I always refer to the need to address these issues from a health and not a criminal justice perspective.My home town in Drogheda is in the grip of a criminal feud to do with the supply of drugs. Very little attention is given to those who are in the grip of problem drug use, and I shall give an example. We are about to open a refurbished HSE drugs facility in Drogheda over the coming weeks. The reality is that there are very few staff to populate that centre and we have no outreach workers in the town of Drogheda, which is the biggest town in the State that is not a city. We do not have the outreach workers. The Red Door project is an excellent community-based service but it has not received an increase in funding in recent years. There was one small increase due to lottery funding some years ago but there has been no increase in its core funding. We are in the grip of a drugs feud, or I could describe it as a drugs war, but the State leaves those who are impacted by this on the long finger for treatment and for support. It is simply not on. We can create all of these new facilities, or refurbished facilities, that we want or need, but if we do not populate them with expert staff and outreach workers to deal with the issues on the ground, then it is an absolute waste of time and State resources and money.

I must mention the situation that the school secretaries across the State find themselves in this week. Agreement was reached that school secretaries who are in dispute with the Department of Education and Skills and who are members of Fórsa would engage with the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, on the basis that they could address the long-standing concerns they have around parity with school secretaries who are public servants, those employed with the education and training boards and those employed by the Department of Education and Skills. School secretaries who are employed by school boards of management through schools' annual ancillary grants are receiving as little as €12,500 per annum and must sign on come the Christmas, Easter and summer holidays. This is simply not on. These people do the work of public servants but do not have the same benefits in pension entitlements and so on. They went to the WRC this week and despite the fine words of the Minister for Education and Skills in the Dáil in October, when the school secretaries decided that they would suspend their industrial action on the basis that they would go to the WRC, they have been offered a miserable 1.5% pay increase. It is a miserable offer when one considers that private sector pay increases this year-----