Will the forthcoming public health (alcohol) Bill provide adequate funding and resources to local and regional drug task forces, including my own southern regional drug task force, to implement alcohol strategies? Task forces are required to implement local alcohol strategies even though their funding continues to be cut. It was cut by a further 3% in the recent budget. Expecting task forces to tackle the alcohol problem with diminishing resources is not acceptable.

There was a very good conference on this in January. The local drugs task forces are now being expanded to deal with alcohol also. We discussed this only this week at a sub-committee. The Minister obviously is looking at them - they have been around for 25 or 30 years - to see how effective they are. In that sense, the Minister will bring his recommendations to Government shortly.