Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to say a few words on this very important topic. I welcome the Minister of State to the House and wish her well with her endeavours in terms of this topic that affects nearly every household in the country at some stage or another. I compliment her on the great work that she is doing in this regard.

A lot has been said about the activities that should take place to help the mental health of people, and I fully agree. There is more that the Government could do to open up areas that are locked down at the moment due to Covid. In the middle of last year or whatever, the Government locked down certain counties or municipal districts. If that were done it would allow people more freedom to walk in their own counties. There are many areas, including in my own county of Mayo where we have magnificent hillside and mountain walks. These places are not being utilised at the moment. I do not think that there would be an overflow of people in those areas, so allowing people to explore these walks would greatly help the mental health of an awful lot of people. At the moment people walk in built-up areas like Castlebar, where we have a magnificent walk around the lake that is availed of by many people. If other areas were opened, it would give people a greater opportunity to go mountaineering and so forth. I believe that golf courses could and should be opened up because there are more people walking around the golf course at the moment than there would be if they played golf. I do not see what the difference is between people walking around a course and holding a stick in their hands to hit a ball. This is an area that the Government should consider in terms of 5 March.

One of the big areas that concerns mental health is drugs. I compliment the Garda on taking the step to perform drug tests at work. The Government should consider introducing drug testing in the workforce. There are countries that have drug testing in the workforce, particularly in the construction sector and in many other areas. It is very prevalent in Australia, for instance, particularly if people are working on high-rise buildings or driving machines. It is only fair for the safety of others that drug testing would take place. I ask the Minister of State to take a serious look at this.We are now approaching a phase in which people will be working from home. People who are on drugs will not be noticed, whereas if they have to go to the workplace somebody might notice they are on drugs. The issue is not to find out that they are on drugs but that the mental health of those people can deteriorate if they do not get help, and they may not get the required help if they are working from home. It is an area we should examine.

I saw a statistic more than two years ago, that 50% of people in the country are taking drugs. That is a massive statistic. I do not know whether it is true, but if it is, it is shocking. We have seen the number of fines from the Garda Síochána. It is doing great work in detecting drugs. Even today, €7 million worth of drugs were found in Kildare. Imagine €7 million worth of drugs. In the little village of Balla in my home area, the Garda found €73,000 worth of drugs. This is a small, rural village. I believe it is an epidemic in the country. It is something that is greatly affecting the mental health of many people, more than anything else in my view. There certainly must be a demand when so many drugs are coming into the country. I hope these are matters the Minister of State will examine.

I congratulate her again and wish her well in the great work she is doing in this area, because it involves a lot of misery for a large number of people. It brings great misery to many families. It is not a stigma, in my view. We all should reach out to people who need help, and I compliment the Minister of State in this regard.