Deputy Gino Kenny: I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am sharing time with Deputies Murphy and Boyd Barrett. I thank the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, for its assistance with this Bill. Even though it is a very short Bill, the office did a lot of work to determine its permissibility and found it legally permissible under many stipulations of law, including European law. It found that, if there was political will, this could be legislated for. That is important to note. I welcome our esteemed guests from all parts of the world to the Public Gallery. Many people here have shown great commitment on this issue. This debate has gone on for decades. In my living memory, the default position of the State has always been to continue to criminalise and incarcerate people for drug use. Whatever one believes as to the moral and ethical issues around drug use, we have had six decades of this.

Ireland has one of the highest drug-related death rates in Europe. Our prisons are overflowing with addiction issues and the drug industry. We would think that after six decades of failure things would have moved on. The debate has evolved, and I include myself in this. Most people are more educated, informed and enlightened about what has gone before and what needs to happen now. As I have said previously, imprisoning, criminalising and stigmatising people does not work. We have seen that in other jurisdictions. It is important to move on.

Many people are questioning the logic of our anti-drug laws. They were written in the 1970s when the war on drugs was in its full throes. If we scratch the surface, we see that the war on drugs was concentrated on racism and class with regard to poor people and people of colour. This is for another debate at another time. I am glad that public opinion has progressed and moved on. People do not have the hang-ups that others have in relation to discriminating against people. The citizens' assembly has projected that we need to move on from the status quo because it simply does not work. The citizens' assembly has made many recommendations, including non-legislative recommendations about treatment and how we approach the issue. It also made a fundamental stance on criminalising people. In order to act on this the law has to be changed. It is as simple as that. That is the way our party and many others see it.

As well as the citizens' assembly making its recommendations on stopping criminalising people, 15 months ago the justice committee published a very good report which is a damning indictment of our criminal justice system and continuously criminalising people. My interpretation, and that of many others, is that it advocated a different model and approach to drug use and misuse. We all understand this. It went further on stopping criminalising people and looked at various models and jurisdictions.

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