Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The draft publication of the new national drugs strategy was announced last week. I preface my comments by acknowledging that a public consultation will follow the publication of the draft strategy. It is extremely positive that the proposals will be opened up to a wider input. However, after reading the document several times, I have lots of concerns. There is positive language in it and positive measures that can be added to and built upon. However, readers who have spent a long time working in drugs policy and are embedded within it, as I have been, will spot issues and ask whether certain measures need to be added or fleshed out a little more. I hope the public consultation allows for that.

One of my concerns relates to the health regions. There is an understanding that facilities historically known as methadone clinics have not moved with the changing nature and landscape of drug use in Ireland. Unfortunately, that conversation is at risk of being caught up in a conversation about drugs task forces, which have changed how they work over the years. I can speak most confidently about the canal communities of Bluebell, Inchicore and Rialto, so I will focus on that area. The methadone clinic there is now in a primary healthcare centre. All the services have moved and changed.

In 2010, an amazing report on those communities, A Dizzying Array of Substances, embedded a response to problem drug use in those south inner-city communities in relation to how we do our work. That response is embedded in community development, with a focus on prevention, intervention and pre-stabilisation. Some cutting-edge violence intervention work is about to begin there. The services are gender-specific. All the services across those communities fall under the banner of the Canal Communities Local Drug and Alcohol Task Force. I am sure there are other examples. I know a lot of great work is being done in Tallaght in terms of crack cocaine initiatives, being able to do detached youth and street work and all that type of thing.

The discussion on health service intervention from a methadone treatment perspective definitely needs to change in terms of its being the primary goal of drugs responses. Work within communities has moved and shifted and task forces have really acted as a container for some very exciting work. I cannot account for what is happening across the country. As I said, I am focusing on the communities I know the best. As we move forward in relation to community work, we must ensure we recognise that people are doing things differently in different parts of the country. We must not impose a health region model that potentially oppresses the exciting working that is happening on the initiative of people in some of those task forces because it removes their autonomy or changes how funding decisions are made and where the money is spent. We must ensure we uncouple certain elements as we go along in order to protect community work and drugs work in this country as part of the national drugs strategy.