….Deputy Gary Gannon: The final and perhaps most important area I want to address is that of drugs use. I chaired the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use this year and spent a considerable amount of time engaging with people who use drugs for a variety of reasons as well as people working in addiction services, academics, gardaí and communities which have lived through the consequences of drug policy for decades.

While personal possession is already criminalised under section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, we cannot pretend for a second that provisions of this Bill have nothing to do with the criminalisation of people for drug use - they absolutely do. Controlled drugs are brought within the definition of a "relevant article" for the purpose of the stop-and-search framework. We are consolidating within this new Garda powers framework the policing mechanisms dealing with enforcement of that existing criminal offence. That distinction matters but so does the reality. The work we have been doing on drugs policy has been moving in a very different direction. We have spent years talking about moving towards a health-led response. Our committee recommended the repeal of section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Minister's policy talks of a health-led approach. This Bill does not criminalise possession but does consolidate the architecture through which that criminalisation operates. That makes the absence of proper demographic information even more concerning.

Drug use does not belong to one social class or postcode. People use drugs in affluent communities and in disadvantaged communities alike, but that does not mean everybody has the same experience of being policed for it. If a young person in one part of Dublin is repeatedly stopped and searched for suspected possession while somebody doing exactly the same thing elsewhere almost never encounters a Garda stop and search, that obviously matters. We need to know whether that is happening; if it is not, we should have the information to demonstrate that too. If the State retains the criminal offence of personal possession and gives gardaí powers to stop and search people in connection with it, we should at minimum be capable of examining which communities are experiencing those powers. Otherwise, we will know even less about who is carrying the burden of our continued policy of criminalisation.

There are many other issues in the Bill that will need detailed consideration on Committee Stage. It is striking that the 2021 general scheme was presented by the Government as having a strong focus on human rights and contained a dedicated part on fundamental rights, while those express human rights provisions are absent from the Bill before us. That deserves an explanation and I hope the Minister gives one in his response.

There are three things I particularly ask the Minister to consider: look again at journalistic privilege and the model operating in Northern Ireland; accept the principle that if the State is to be given stop-and-search powers, we should collect enough demographic information to know how those powers are being used; and look at the provisions concerning controlled drugs in the context of the direction we claim to be taking on national drugs policy - that is the Minister's direction, not mine. Gardaí need clear powers and the public needs effective policing, but neither of those things is undermined by safeguards or appropriate access to facts; they are strengthened by them.

We will table amendments on Committee Stage on these issues. Some will deal with concerns raised since the Bill was substantially reshaped. Others will deal with recommendations that have effectively been sitting on the table since pre-legislative scrutiny. Either way, I hope the response from Government will not simply be that the Bill has taken long enough and needs to pass. It has clearly been altered substantially since being introduced.

I will touch on some aspects of the Minister's contribution. There is one I was not going to bring up but the Minister played the music - the issue of solicitors. The Minister said he hoped to have enough solicitors in our District Court. I would argue strongly that that is on him. The Minister and I differ completely when it comes to the reform needed. I disagree with the measures he has taken and I find the narrative that has been building really challenging. The absence of evidence supporting the measures he has taken is quite striking, but we are where we are. The Law Society has written to the Minister asking him to engage with a mediator. No harm can come from talking. I hope the Minister revisits that and that we find a solution to this. The impacts in the courts are clear for everybody to see. By no measure is our Courts Service working effectively.

The Minister said something in the summer that is also relevant to this Bill and to stop-and-search powers. After the tragedy on the M9, he gave an interview to thejournal.ie and spoke about 1,000 young people in the State being outside the recourse of the Garda youth diversion programme. I agree with him to a point but he lost me when he did not say what we would do about that. The 2018 Greentown report also talked about 1,000 young people in the State who were being groomed into criminality. I would say there is significant overlap between those two cohorts. We have also had considerable debate on parental responsibility and whether parents should be punished for the crimes of their children. Whatever the Minister's view on that, we have to accept there are in this State complex issues related to generational poverty and trauma which have been well discussed. There are also children being groomed into criminality. The effects are seen on our streets in the unsightly elements of young people selling drugs on scooters. We will not be able to slowly police our way out of that. I would love to be part of the conversation with the Minister on the new youth justice strategy. There are good examples in the Belvedere Youth Club in town of working with children between the ages of seven and nine. I would love to talk to the Minister further about that. This is something I would like us to work together on...

[Click here for the full debate on the Oireachtas website]