Apologies have been received from Deputy Máire Devine and Senator Nicole Ryan. I am delighted to open the 21st public meeting of the joint committee and the fifth in our module on legal issues. I welcome our witnesses, Dr. Cian Ó Concubhair, assistant professor in criminal justice at Maynooth University school of law and criminology where he lectures in criminal law and policing and Dr. Ian Marder, associate professor in criminology at the same school, whose research focuses on policing and translational criminology. Ms Fenella Sentance from Release is joining us online. They are all very welcome.

Before we begin, I will read out a note on privilege. I remind witnesses and members of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I remind members of the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. Members of the committee attending remotely must do so from within the precincts of Leinster House. This is due to the constitutional requirement that, in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the place where Parliament has chosen to sit. In that regard, I ask any members participating via Microsoft Teams to confirm, prior to making their contributions, that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

As agreed, witnesses will each have five minutes to deliver their opening statements. This will allow plenty of time for questions and answers with members. If necessary, further or more detailed information can be sent to the clerk to the committee for circulation to members. Members will be in and out of the room during the meeting due to other parliamentary commitments that may be happening at the same time. I invite Dr. Cian Ó Concubhair to deliver his opening statement. He has five minutes.

Gabhaim buíochas le baill an choiste as an gcuireadh labhairt leis an gcoiste. I am very grateful for the opportunity to again speak with the committee as it undertakes its potentially generationally significant legislative work in the area of drugs policy. I hope through my expertise and experience that I can be of assistance to the committee today.

I am assistant professor in criminal justice at Maynooth University school of law and criminology, where I lecture on criminal law and policing. I research across the criminal law and policing, with a particular focus on police powers, governance, accountability and legitimacy. As I noted in my last appearance before the committee, I speak today not just as a researcher in these areas. I am also one of a handful of criminal justice scholars with direct personal experience of the criminal justice system. In 2009, while working as a stonemason and before I began my academic career, I was prosecuted and convicted for cultivating cannabis for sale or supply, receiving a five-year prison sentence fully suspended.

I welcome the committee’s interim report recommendations, particularly that section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 be repealed. Repeal of section 3 is the only way to achieve the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use. The citizens’ assembly’s message was crystal clear that Ireland should remove the harmful stigma around drug use. Section 3, like all criminal offences, is designed to impose stigma. The only way to remove this stigma is to decriminalise drug use by repealing section 3. Decriminalisation, or for that matter legalisation, does not equate to State endorsement or normalisation of an activity. The decriminalisation of suicide in 1993 did not and does not constitute State endorsement or normalisation of suicide. The State can legally permit conduct while actively and successfully dissuading and discouraging it through other legal and policy measures. Ireland’s current law and policy governing tobacco is an excellent illustration of this.

I will address a number of points raised by recent witnesses before the committee at the end of February this year. First, it was claimed that repealing section 3 will legally compromise An Garda Síochána’s ability to police the sale and supply of drugs. This is an incorrect reading of the 1977 Act. No other drug offence depends on section 3 and search powers for other offences under the 1977 Act will remain intact following repeal of section 3. I am very happy to take the committee through the legislation to explain this in more detail.

Second, it was claimed that An Garda Síochána does not really use section 3 to prosecute drug users and instead uses it to focus on drug dealers. This is not accurate and the evidence shows this. One only needs to attend Portlaoise District Court in the months following Electric Picnic every year to see that An Garda Síochána routinely prosecutes drug users in very significant numbers. It should be noted An Garda Síochána’s claim about the necessity of section 3 to prosecute drug dealers is a significant departure from its previous position on decriminalisation. In 2024, before this committee, An Garda Síochána claimed section 3 was essential to gather intelligence, in other words, by threatening drug users with prosecution and conviction unless they provided information about suppliers. However, this position seems to have been abandoned by An Garda Síochána through its apparent enthusiasm for the proposed Garda drug diversion scheme.

Finally, it was claimed that if section 3 were repealed, this would make it easier for drug sellers and suppliers to avoid prosecution. There are many things to say about this kind of evidence-free claim, but speaking as a retired and reformed drug dealer, you would be wildly unsuccessful in that business if you only transported tiny amounts equivalent to personal use. The committee has already heard from police in Portugal that decriminalising drug possession there has not impacted on its ability to police drug dealers.

My remaining points relate to the proposed Garda drug diversion scheme. As no information has been published about this potential measure, my observations are based on the information provided to the committee in February by An Garda Síochána. First, it is worth noting that this proposal will involve coerced medical treatment. There are ethical issues with forcing individuals to engage with health services, particularly if they are not engaging in problematic use. There is nothing in the law to prevent members of An Garda Síochána routinely referring those who gardaí feel need help to appropriate services. They can do so without holding the threat of conviction and punishment over drug users, most of whom are not engaged in problematic use.

Second, it was claimed that on first instance, diversion to health services would be automatic, that is, that gardaí would be obligated to divert. I am not sure how this would work. If section 3 remains law, there is no legal way to stop members of An Garda Síochána from prosecuting drug users or to stop the District Court from imposing convictions. The only way I can conceive of such a system working is if there is a disciplinary sanction against gardaí who fail or refuse to use the diversion scheme. I have difficulty seeing this would be the case, particularly given the current political backlash to disciplinary efforts within An Garda Síochána. Relatedly, I draw the committee’s attention to a publication from the week before last by Dr. Matthew Bacon and others in Policing and Society, which examined a number of police drug diversion schemes in England. I would be happy to explain their highly relevant findings to the committee.

This kind of one-strike approach to drug diversion is manifestly not what was recommended by the citizens’ assembly. Diversion is not decriminalisation as it still maintains stigma. Diversion, as the evidence shows, is also inconsistent. Repealing section 3 is the only way to achieve a fair and consistent reform of the law. With those points in mind, I look forward to assisting the committee in its deliberations.

I thank the committee me for inviting to address it. It is my first time in the Oireachtas since I got my Irish citizenship late last year, for which I am very grateful. Thanks to everyone for that.

I am a criminologist who works in two fields relevant to the committee's mandate. The first is policing, for which I collaborate with An Garda Síochána on a number of research projects relating to restorative justice, victims’ rights and police-community relations. The second field, which is research translation, involves helping policymakers find the best available scientific evidence to help their work. I chair the CORD Partnership, a group of 60 policy, practice and research organisations, including the Department of justice, An Garda Síochána and the Policing and Community Safety Authority, which come together to discuss how to use criminological evidence to benefit society. Drug law combines these two areas. The research evidence from other countries and from Ireland suggests the current laws, which give gardaí the power to search, arrest and prosecute people for drug possession, and the courts the power to punish people for drug possession, increase harm to people’s health and to communities. I will discuss research evidence on drug-related health harms, violence and the impact of stop and search on police-community relations.

The international evidence suggests that changing the law can help reduce drug-related harms. When Portugal removed criminal penalties for possessing drugs for personal use, research suggests engagement with treatment increased, while drug-related deaths, high-risk use, use among younger groups, imprisonment for drug offences and HIV cases from injecting all fell. This suggests combining decriminalisation with investment in health and welfare, which is what the assembly recommended, is the most likely blend of law and policy to reduce the most acute drug-related harms. Studies across several countries also suggest changing laws and policies can reduce harm. In 2019, our Department of justice commissioned Professor Alex Stevens to review research across nine countries. His study concluded that "alternative measures can reduce harms imposed by criminal justice processes without increasing drug use or related health and crime harms". In other words, it is the criminal penalties that cause harm and removing them can enable investment in interagency collaboration and health services and reduces the stigma that stops people accessing services.

Whatever you think of using drugs other than alcohol, the research evidence from the field of criminology shows criminalisation is effective at imposing retribution, stigma and punishment, but is not an effective way to help people solve the problems in their lives that can lead to problem drug use and crime in the first place. Recent data suggests there were 3,959 convictions for drug possession in the District Court in 2025. I heard at this committee broad agreement to prioritise health over punishment for people who use drugs. This is a good chance to align the law with that priority.

On drug-related violence, we know from international studies that the police absolutely can collaborate with other services to reduce violence through targeted communications to offenders, by activating families and community services to interrupt violence and through health and social service interventions. While the committee has heard a lot of evidence about the harms of drug-related violence, I urge members to recognise they have heard no scientific evidence that criminalising people who use drugs helps reduce that violence. A recent review of research on the effects of drug law enforcement on drug market violence concluded that "‘increasing drug law enforcement is unlikely to reduce drug market violence [which] may be an inevitable consequence of drug prohibition and that disrupting drug markets can paradoxically increase violence".

As one of very few academics in Ireland to have collaborated with An Garda Síochána on research, I will discuss one study for which I organised dialogue days between gardaí and young black adults in Blanchardstown. Our first round of results found that young adults who did not carry drugs were concerned with how regularly they were searched. They described that they, their friends and families experienced what they considered repeated and unwarranted searches. For young adults in work or university who do not use drugs, but who are black and live in Blanchardstown, a police drug possession search is a normalised experience. The dialogue days gave gardaí and community members a chance to share experience and listen to each other on stop and search. When interviewed after the dialogue one garda said:

When they were speaking about different experiences they’ve had with Gardaí, I was like: “Oh my God!” I never thought of it that way. [...] I definitely could see, from their point of view, why they’re getting agitated when they’re being stopped by the guards.

During the process, gardaí noted that in practice "any suspicion is reasonable suspicion" and that "even walking around in the same area" as drugs are perceived to be present can be grounds for a search in practice. While Health Research Board data show drugs are consumed at the same rates in the top and bottom 20% of areas by wealth, the burden of stop and search always falls on young working-class men because of stigma, not drug use prevalence. These findings align with international research that shows if police can search people for drugs for personal use they will do so widely, lowering trust through over-policing at a time when, surely, we want to build trust in the State across all communities.

Thank you so much for having me. It such a privilege to be here.

I work at Release, which is the UK's centre of expertise on drugs and drug laws. I initially joined the organisation in 2021 advocating for people who were in receipt of opioid agonist therapy. I then moved to being a legal researcher and then ongoing training as a solicitor. I am also a co-author of the Global Commission on Drug Policy's 2024 report, UNAIDS's 2026 guidance note on drug decriminalisation in the context of HIV, and Release's advocacy toolkit for people in drug treatment.

Release provides legal and medical advocacy to people who are using drugs, working on approximately 1,200 cases each year, as well as operating a harm reduction hub where we provide sterile needles, harm reduction advice, and tea and coffee. Release has published expert reports on drug laws and reforms, including on stop and search, naloxone access, and drug decriminalisation and regulation globally. We are often consulted as experts in this field.

Through my legal work on homelessness, welfare benefits and debt, I see the daily impact on every aspect of life that criminalisation of drugs has, from housing to family to health, some of which has already been touched on and the committee has heard about. I will be talking briefly about the role of legislative reform in reducing harmful impacts of drug use and enabling harm reduction responses that protect the health and rights of people who use drugs.

As a starting point, and as has already been mentioned, many of the harms associated with drug use stem from criminalisation. One of the major harms many drug users will experience in their lives will be criminalisation. It undermines social determinants of health, such as employment and access to housing, and does so on racialised and class-based lines. Criminalisation also fundamentally changes the risks of drug use. We see research that shows increased law enforcement can force people to engage in riskier use practices, such as rushed injecting, using alone and accidental needle sharing.

In England, where I am from, approximately half of the people who die of opioid-related deaths have had no contact with treatment services for over five years. Without doubt, a factor in this will be the barriers created by criminalisation. Related to that, research from the Higher Education Policy Institute specifically found that 16% of students did not seek emergency help when it was needed in a drug situation because of that fear of punishment.

Decriminalisation of the possession of drugs, and people who use drugs more broadly, is a key legislative change in this area for those reasons. Typically, decriminalisation refers to the removal of criminal penalties for drug possession and sometimes other low-level offences. This is an approach that 39 countries globally have adopted in some form, including a number of EU states such as Portugal, the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. Decriminalisation has been recognised as an essential public health response on the international level, being the UN system common position as of 2018. That represents all 31 UN agencies, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Decriminalisation removes the harmful impacts of criminalisation itself, but also facilitates greater access to harm reduction services, which need to be properly funded and scaled up. As Dr. Marder has already mentioned, an oft-cited example is Portugal, which implemented decriminalisation in July 2001 alongside the scaling up of harm reduction services. There was an overall drop of 59% in drug-related deaths from 1999 to 2003, and that has been linked partly to the number of people using heroin who then accessed treatment. Spain also decriminalised in a 1974 constitutional court decision, and that went hand in hand with a comprehensive harm reduction response, including a mobile drug consumption room, 16 drug consumption rooms in total and drug-checking. Decriminalisation also allowed significant costs spent on policing to move to harm reduction.

The changes needed relate not only to decriminalisation of possession but decriminalisation, more broadly, of people who use drugs and the services that would benefit them. Reforms should create an enabling environment for the introduction and scaling up of peer-led harm reduction responses, such as drug-checking, drug consumption rooms and safe supply. Along with criminalisation, an unregulated drug supply is the major harm that many drug users will face in their lives, and that is particularly true when we have seen the existence of nitazenes in the Irish drug supply and their role in overdose spikes in Dublin in 2023 and 2024.

We know that easing criminal frameworks directly results in effective harm reduction responses and that this work has been under way for decades. We have seen that even in the UK context, where the decriminalisation of harm reduction equipment, ranging from sterile needles in the 1980s to foil in 2014, enabled essential harm reduction initiatives, and now, too, in Ireland with the first drug consumption room, DCR, in Dublin following the 2017 Act. Decriminalisation of personal possession and other low-level offences is a continuation of this work, and it is urgently needed.

I thank Ms Sentance for her contribution.

I thank the three witnesses. This area is very important, particularly for the work we are doing here in the committee, and probably one of the most important areas, particularly in terms of the legislation we have, what needs to be changed and what can be changed, etc. I thank the witnesses for their submissions, which were really interesting and informative.

I will start with Dr. Ó Concubhair. We had the Garda in here, and Dr. Ó Concubhair referred to this. One of the Garda's issues was around section 3 and the removal of what it felt would undermine its power to charge people for possession. If people were dealing drugs, the Garda could not charge them if they only had a small amount of drugs on them. The idea was you would have dealers who would have a bag hidden behind a wall and a small amount in their pocket and slowly but surely they were handing out. With the best will in the world, we do not want to protect dealers but at the same time we do not want people who only have drugs for their own use to be charged. It is a fine line. This was coming from the Garda. As Dr. Ó Concubhair said, the Garda's position has changed somewhat. I would like to know what Dr. Ó Concubhair feels the difference is and the impact that removing section 3, or even changing it, would have in terms of decriminalisation, both positive and negative.

I have two responses to that. The first is a practical question about the burden that is on An Garda Síochána to prove a section 15 charge, which is sale or supply. Our law is not designed in a way that takes into account the volume of the drug in possession. That may be part of the evidence and argument in the court case but the rule itself does not require a certain threshold to be met before the presumption is that you are in possession for sale or supply.

It is not difficult for gardaí to gather evidence, even if someone is in possession of a small amount. In the circumstance the Deputy describes, they can gather surveillance information that shows them going to a stash that is behind a particular area. It would not be an unusual policing practice to observe a particular location that they know where there is a lot of trade going on, to observe it and record it so that they have enough evidence. In those circumstances, they would be able to get the evidence.

Also, what has radically shifted in the last ten to 15 years is that very little of the trade takes place on the street any more. I live in Dublin 8. I have been living there, on and off, for the last 20 years and it is interesting to see the shift. There is very little street trade anymore. Most of it takes place by people using communications platforms, such as Signal and WhatsApp. That is an evidential bonanza for gardaí. If they can seize a phone, which they do routinely, and gain access to the phone, which they do routinely, then they can see, regardless of how much. Even if they find someone not in possession of drugs, they have plenty of evidence there to bring a prosecution.

On the practicalities, as the committee heard previously when the police commander for Porto was here, that is not an issue where its police have experienced any difficulty. In jurisdictions in the United States and Canada where they have experimented with decriminalising all drugs, the complaints from police about decriminalisation have nothing to do with their inability to police drug dealers, which is really notable.

Regardless of what gardaí think is happening, if they do not have evidence of dealing, it is not dealing. Whether they think someone is dealing or not, and I have personal experience of engaging with the gardaí, they may believe something to be the case that is not the case.

We often hear them saying, "We know what is really happening". That is a very problematic line of argument, particularly if you are talking about how you are designing a legislative scheme, which is to say that gardaí really know what is going on and you want to give them maximum leeway. Gardaí already have extraordinarily expansive powers of search, seizure and the ability to prosecute and detain people. I would be very careful about using justifications like that, which were quite off the cuff, in responding and in designing a particular scheme.

The final thing I will say on this is that I find it hard to believe that gardaí are really using section 3 prosecutions to go after drug dealers. What is the value of doing so from their perspective? This is very unlikely to result in custodial sentences, so why would you use that particular tactic? I just do not find it particularly credible as an argument. I encourage members of the committee to attend the District Court to see exactly what is being prosecuted under section 3, because it is most certainly not people who are engaging in drug dealing.

In terms of search powers, and this came up in February when representatives of An Garda Síochána were here, there was a suggestion that removing section 3 would compromise their ability to operate. With the powers of search, all a garda needs to have is a reasonable suspicion that someone is in possession with an intention to sell or supply. It is a reasonable suspicion; they do not even need to know how much drugs they have on them or see how many drugs they have on them. If they reasonably suspect that someone is in possession of something for sale or supply, they are empowered to search that person, their vehicle or their aircraft.

I think I might have a little leeway.

A little.

This question is for Dr. Marder. One of the major problems at the moment relates to drug-related violence and intimidation. This is affecting a huge number of communities, and not necessarily in the areas where it would have been a problem historically. In the context of Dr. Marder's research on international norms, is there a fix or deal with this? If so, what is it?

I will first comment on one matter in relation to the Deputy’s previous question to Dr. Ó Conchbhair. Some really useful research has been conducted by the University of Limerick in collaboration with youth justice work organisations and An Garda Síochána in the context of a project the Deputy may have heard of, namely the Greentown project, which looked at criminal networks and, in particular, the recruitment of children and young people to conduct criminal activity on behalf of the people who benefit from it. Where there is a non-zero possibility of someone who is tangentially involved in drug dealing only carrying a very small amount on them, it is very likely that if that does happen, it would be some of these children who have basically been groomed into this activity. That is basically a child protection issue. If a child does not get prosecuted for dealing in those circumstances, that is probably a very positive thing. It would either be more a case of them being used as a mule or a child protection issue than it would of them being prosecuted as a dealer.

There has been a lot of research on preventing drug-related violence. One of the most effective policing philosophies or approaches to that is what the public health approach. This approach to violence prevention involves a number of activities around the same time, one of which involves focused deterrents. That is where the police engage directly with people who they suspect of engaging in violence and communicate to them directly that there is both evidence that they are involved and that they are being watched closely, but also that there are pathways out of crime that the police will support them to engage with. That has been tried in a number cities around the world, including Boston and Chicago, that had very high levels of violence historically. In Glasgow, it is called the violence reduction unit. The former chair of that will be speaking at a conference here organised by the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development in June.

You have the policing aspect of it and then the referrals to other agencies. It is about having a co-ordination between police, health, education and services in such a way that you can prevent those other services from doing things that are likely to increase violence. For example, recent research has shown a significant relationship between school exclusions and youth violence. As a result, one of the most effective ways of preventing youth violence is reducing school exclusions. Also to the extent that there is a lot of violence that is interpersonal in nature and that has a link to a health or mental health issue, one of the most effective ways of preventing or reducing it is that when a person comes to the attention of the criminal justice system having committed violence or another offence, but where there is an underlying issue that can be addressed through other services, that there are direct pathways, direct resource, well-supported pathways for police to engage with and refer to those other organisations.

I will say one thing on drug-related intimidation and that area of violence. A significant proportion of that, according to research taking place in cities in Ireland, comes from situations where someone falls into debt because the police seized an amount of drugs from them. There is lots of evidence from around the world, and also from here, looking at how law enforcement activities can actually have the effect of increasing violence in and related to the drugs trade.

In many cases I have dealt with, it would have been people who had run up a debt. It may have started off as a small amount but then it escalates. Then their families are dragged in, and the families are being intimidated. In some cases, they are very elderly people whose houses have been targeted. They are afraid to report it. They are also afraid of the consequences. Credit unions have special loans for families that are dealing with it. It is that kind of intimidation. Sometimes the person who owes the debt moves away, but the debt remains with their family and close people. They are living through hell. They are terrified. We have seen what people have done to teach a lesson. They are threatening people that they will burn them out, attack their daughter. It is that kind of pressure and intimidation on individuals who may not be associated with the debt in any way; it is just through their relationship with someone who might be in addiction.

Definitely. The volume and severity of those types of cases as well as their concentration in marginalised communities is a really good reason to have a policy that is deeply informed by the research evidence on the best way to prevent that. One of the really interesting areas of evidence around this is on policies that support the displacement of the black market. Ideally, what you would want is for people who end up using drugs not to interact with criminal organisations at all. That can be a very different thing depending on the substance involved. If you are talking about heroin, there are countries where supervised injection facilities of the kind that we have in Dublin also have the legal ability to prescribe heroin or diamorphine on site for consumption on site. It is called heroin-assisted treatment. That is shown to be a really good way to reduce heroin consumption among people who use those facilities and increase engagement with health services but also to displace that black market. As a result, those people are less likely to or less frequently will interact with the kind of people the Deputy is talking about.

At the other end of the spectrum, is the substance that is completely different in its effects on people. In the countries that have legal regulation of cannabis, one of the major rationales for that is displacing the black market and making it so that fewer people who consume cannabis, whether frequently, infrequently or whatever, actually have to interact with those who supply and profit and are potentially are at risk of going into debt with some of the elements the Deputy is talking about.

I will ask my questions now. One of the fears that has been expressed in relation to the removal of section 3 would be an increase in on-street consumption. How would the witnesses address those fears?

Section 3 is not designed to address public consumption. If the Oireachtas were to repeal section 3, something we might recommend would be that either government guidance goes out to every local authority in the country. I do not think local authorities would have any problem with this, but they can prohibit public consumption of other substances. Every local authority in the country already prohibits public consumption of alcohol. We do not have gaps in coverage any more.

So that would give us something that the Oregon model, for example, would not have had.

Exactly.

We have council by-laws which would address some of the fears that were highlighted by the commissioner from Portugal, I think, who also said that an increase in public consumption would have occurred or that where there was an increase in public consumption, and that one of the assets we would have that the Portuguese potentially did not would be the capacity for council by-laws.

And primary legislation. I would not recommend that as a solution to this problem. It is better to allow the local authorities to do this. Local authorities can create by-laws which give gardaí the power to seize substances

Which councils already do, presumably. I can go from here to buy a bottle of whiskey and head to my local park. The whiskey is legal but the consumption of it in the park is not.

Yes, and gardaí are empowered to seize and dispose of it.

How does that work?

The question is what the constraint is on local authorities and the powers they can create. There would be constitutional issues if local authorities were to bestow stop-and-search powers on gardaí just for possession.

If, as matters stand, I purchase a bottle of whiskey and head into the park, I am not allowed to drink it there or on the street because there is a council by-law.

If you are in a park, it is the by-law relating to that park. For example, the Phoenix Park has its own by-laws and Stephen's Green has its own by-laws. If you are on the street, it is the local authority, which is Dublin City Council.

If I fail to remove myself when being directed to do so by a garda, that comes under public order.

I do not have details to hand, but there are specific powers under by-laws and under public order law that give gardaí the power to move people along. Refusal to obey the directions of gardaí can result in conviction.

We actually have our own templates and a domestic model. That is interesting.

Yes. There is a question as to how it interacts with prohibited substances. I am sure there is a way to just copy and paste that into a by-law in order to have it refer to the substances, because you would have to name the substances that people not allowed to consume, but we already have a list in secondary legislation. My view would be that it would not be legally problematic for local authorities to just say that, as well as alcohol, they include all these other substances that are controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

I was going to raise the issue of public drug use. There are jurisdictions that distinguish between private and public. The committee has heard evidence about the Spanish model, which has quite a severe administrative fine for public use. It is important to bear in mind that there are reasons around public drug use that are not going to be related to decriminalisation. We have mentioned Oregon. There were many concerns about public drug use increasing, but decriminalisation in the form of Ballot Measure 110 in Oregon coincided with the end of the moratorium on evictions that many countries had during Covid, so some of the increase in public drug use there is not because of decriminalisation; it is largely due to housing insecurity. There are other ways of mitigating those concerns about public drug use that are not necessarily treating public drug possession completely differently, given the risk that, in so doing, you are going to leave behind a portion of people, who will probably be homeless people, from the benefits of decriminalisation. One of the key things is scaling up drug consumption rooms, which is a logical response if there are concerns about public drug use, to enable people to use drugs in private, in more sterile conditions without necessarily the burden of an administrative fine on someone who will usually already be quite financially disadvantaged. That might serve primarily to displace them, but it will not solve the immediate issue if those people do not have a place where they can use their drugs privately.

If we remove section 3, what powers would gardaí have to intercede in respect of the sale of drugs and with drug dealers?

Would the Cathaoirleach like me to run through the legislation briefly? I have it in front of me.

Absolutely.

Section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 states, "A member of the Garda Síochána who with reasonable cause suspects that a person is in possession in contravention of this Act of a controlled drug". The key part of this is "a person is in possession in contravention of this Act". It does not say anything about personal possession. In fact, it would be a problem if a search power was designed based only on personal possession, because then in theory, if they suspected someone was in possession with intent to sell or supply, they would not have the power to search them, so it is a general search power designed to attach to any of the offences. If you repeal section 3, the way section 23 would work is that we would look to section 15, which relates to possession offences and which states:

Any person who has in his possession, whether lawfully or not, a controlled drug for the purpose of selling or otherwise supplying it to another in contravention of regulations under section 5 of this Act, shall be guilty of an offence.

That is the key part. If a garda suspects someone of being in possession in contravention of the Act with intention to sell or supply the drug, that person is in contravention of section 15, so the garda has a search power them. If gardaí reasonably suspect that a person is in possession, they can lawfully search that person or their vehicle or aircraft under section 23.

I thank the witnesses for answering those questions. It seems, regarding some fears that have been expressed about public consumption, that they can be dealt with under council by-laws. Interceding in respect of the sale of drugs on our streets can also be covered under sections 3 and 15. When it comes to supporting communities which are more vulnerable, we need an expansion of our safe use and consumption rooms, which the committee has already taken an interest in.

Cuirim fáilte roimh na finnéithe. I have a question for Dr. Ó Concubhair. When we talk about decriminalisation, some groups in the wider community who do not fully understand why a health-led approach is important get nervous. I would love Dr. Ó Concubhair to explain how the statement that he made about decriminalisation does not endorse an activity. We have people who would regularly watch this Oireachtas committee and are very aware of why there is a campaign of advocacy in this committee for a health-led approach, but it would be really beneficial for Dr. Ó Concubhair, as an expert, to put on the record and explain why decriminalisation does not mean endorsing an activity and to give context to that for people who are yet to be convinced.

It is a tricky one to answer without getting into abstract, theoretical ideas about what the role of the law is. The simplest way to say it is that if the State does not criminalise something, it is basically neutral on it, but the State can not criminalise an activity, but can have a variety of policies designed to actively dissuade. For example, with tobacco, I do not think anyone in this room would suggest that the Government's view is that you should be smoking tobacco or that doing so is a good thing to do and a good lifestyle choice. That is not the view of the State, I would say with a lot of confidence. It would be the same for repealing section 3. I have no doubt in my mind that if section 3 was repealed, Government policy in the Oireachtas would not be sending messages to members of the public saying it is absolutely wonderful if they use these substances now and this is a good thing for their life. On the point that this is not endorsement, that is what I would say.

On the question of normalisation, I have been hearing for 30 or 40 years that it is becoming normalised. The evidence, at least in Ireland, is that drug usage patterns are pretty stable. Some consumption has gone down, including that relating to opiates, and cocaine consumption has gone up. Other drugs are pretty stable, comparable to what they were. Teenage drug consumption has gone down significantly. I would have a doubt about discourse about what normalisation actually is, but if we look to the evidence of jurisdictions that have actually decriminalised, we can see that usage patterns do not go up. It does not have an impact.

We can point to that as well to say that decriminalisation does normalise, at least as far as normalisation means people use substances more. Now, legalisation is slightly different and we do have evidence emerging from some jurisdictions that certain forms of legalisation which I personally would not recommend, for example cannabis legalisation in some states in the USA where they have gone for a relatively unrestrained commercial model, could look like state endorsement of consumption. It is arguable that the Irish State's position on alcohol consumption is probably mixed messaging but there are elements of Government policy here that do endorse alcohol consumption and say that it is a good and positive thing. I personally do not have a problem with that but there is also messaging and policy coming out of the State that would counter that.

In terms of normalisation, there is no evidence to suggest that decriminalisation normalises, whatever that might mean. We can say to members of the community that if we remove section 3, the evidence is very strong to say that people are not going to increase their drug use. People's decision-making around drug use is remarkably unrelated to the criminal regime. For example, what is really interesting in the US right now is that cocaine consumption is declining quite steeply. Indeed, it is an international outlier and this is despite the fact that there is far more cocaine available in the US than there has been in the last 30 years. What has changed is public attitudes and that is really key. We can see that with other substances as well. These questions of normalisation, acceptance or endorsement are pretty detached from the criminal rules. I would not be worried about the removal of section 3 sending a message to people, particularly young people, that they should go out and consume these things. Actually, they are already choosing not to for a variety of other reasons. They are choosing not to consume all sorts of substances. Alcohol consumption among teenagers has gone down very significantly. Again, that may be partly to do with how easy it is to get access. It is a bit more difficult than it was 20 years ago for teenagers to get access but a significant part of it seems to be just a cultural shift unrelated to the regulatory approach or any legal changes. I hope that answers the Senator's question.

It does and it also gives the broader context. I have one other question. Dr. Ó Concubhair mentioned something about a police drug diversion policy. I ask him to expand on that because it sounds interesting.

What is being proposed by An Garda Síochána and the Department of justice is a type of drug diversion scheme which is as described to this committee in February. On first instance, if a garda encounters someone who has never been caught in possession of drugs for personal use previously, the idea is that the individual will not be processed through the criminal justice system, as in prosecuted. Instead, the individual will be given a mandatory referral to addiction and health services.

Did Dr. Ó Concubhair say that is already in place in the UK?

Yes. Durham constabulary in particular has really been leading the way on this but a variety of police forces in England have piloted or adopted a variety of different types of police drug diversion schemes like that. I want to put it on the record that the English context is really important to understand. The Government and the Parliament in England are extremely hostile to drug reform. What we are seeing in England is police forces themselves, led by police leaders who understand that the policies of legal prohibition on drug use have failed spectacularly because they are on the front line, using their discretion and carving out these police drug diversion schemes. They are doing so in order to try to ameliorate some of the harms of criminalisation. The context is so different here. I do not know why but we are not dealing with the same issues. There is a political appetite for very significant reform in this jurisdiction which does not exist in England. The English model is basically a progressive police response.

Is it to save face?

No. It is to save resources and to reduce harm because the police, unlike the politicians in government in England, are very engaged with evidence. They are probably the most engaged with evidence and with what works. They are very concerned about what works and they realise that current drug policing does not work so a growing number of forces have adopted these schemes which do not have the imprimatur of the Parliament. They have not been told, yet, to stop doing it but they could be. They have not been told to stop so far, so basically, within the realm of police discretion they have carved out these systems, which is tricky. They are obviously an excellent response if one is dealing with that political context but there are problems. I included a reference in my opening statement to a very recent publication by Mr. Matthew Bacon and others in Sheffield on policing in society. The authors evaluated all of these systems. One of the problems with them is that they are very inconsistent because they are based on discretion and as I said earlier, there is nothing to stop police continuing to prosecute. It is very difficult. These systems are great if one is dealing with a hostile political class, as is the context in England, but they are definitely not the ideal. The ideal is full decriminalisation and resourcing the police to divert people appropriately.

I thank both of our witnesses for being here today. Apologies for the disruptions but we had a vote in the Seanad Chamber. My first question is for Dr. Marder. Before I left for the vote he was talking about the work he did with gardaí in Blanchardstown and black males. Did he do a similar exercise with white males?

No. The work we did in Blanchardstown was effectively a collaboration with An Garda Síochána that was piloting a particular approach to police, community dialogue. We had many conversations with Garda leadership around what kind of context we would choose to collaborate on to pilot that and because it was so soon after the protests in Blanchardstown following the shooting of George Nkencho, we took the decision to focus our energies on young black adults. It was not males only. There were also females involved. Just to explain the demographic that was chosen, we wanted to work with young adults because they would have been likely to have had a lot of experience of interacting with gardaí. We could have worked with children but given the additional risks involved with interacting with under-18s in that context, we decided to focus specifically on young adults, male and female, from the black community locally.

Has there been any study done in Ireland that is similar but without any racial profiling?

Yes, there has been a number of small scale projects on policy, community dialogue. I have to say that the other major one does have an ethnicity element because there is also a programme of Garda-Traveller dialogue days. In addition to that, we have a lot of projects that are often run by youth justice workers. For example, in Dublin Central and Dublin South a number of youth diversion projects or youth work organisations facilitate things which very much approximate the kind of work that we did, bringing together groups of gardaí, youth workers and young people, often from working class communities, to talk about the relationship between the police and community. Belvedere Youth Club in Dublin 1 is an example of this. Bradóg Youth Service has also done some work in this area and there has been some work in Clondalkin involving the police as well.

Thanks, that is really helpful.

I want to go back to the section 3 issue because it is really important. It is the crux of the matter really. When we had the chief of police from Portugal speak with us recently, he talked about the policing practices and explained to us the model that they are using in Portugal. I note that in his opening statement Dr. Cian Ó Concubhair says that decriminalising drug possession in Portugal has not impacted on the police's ability to police drug dealers and that is correct. What the chief of police said was that it had an impact on how they are policing drugs. They now have a much more investigation-led approach and are focusing more on dealers than users. However, he did also speak about the challenges in the public space. He talked about how using or consuming drugs in public spaces is not a criminal offence and described the challenges that presents for policing communities in particular. I ask Dr. Cian Ó Concubhair, with his knowledge and expertise, to share with us how he thinks it would work in Ireland effectively.

One of the big complaints that the general non-drug using public has is they are sick shit of smelling weed in the parks, canals and streets. That is one big bugbear with the general public. We should not understate or underestimate getting over that hurdle. If Dr. Ó Concubhair could talk to that, it would be really useful.

I thank the Senator. I have already addressed it-----

I apologise.

-----but I am very happy to repeat it for her benefit. As I explained earlier, if we look at public consumption of alcohol in this jurisdiction, every single local authority and every public park in Ireland has by-laws restricting public consumption of alcohol. Within those by-laws are Garda powers to seize alcohol if it is being consumed and dispose of it, and to direct people to leave an area if they are consuming alcohol. Those powers are used to very good effect in certain areas. Living in Dublin city centre, I see what I would describe as excellent policing practices around how gardaí engage with members of the public who are consuming alcohol on the street. Most of the time it is very good and positive. Usually, it is quite a restrained approach of directing people to dispose of it themselves.

We all know the process takes weeks and months, but could Dublin City Council introduce by-laws today?

Yes.

Could it?

Absolutely. There is no reason to because section 3 exists. I am sure the council's thinking is if the gardaí are the ones doing the enforcement, which they are, around alcohol as well-----

Leave it to them.

They are not the only ones who can enforce the by-laws. In the Phoenix Park, it is not the gardaí who enforce the alcohol by-laws but park rangers, etc. We can empower other people to enforce those kinds of by-laws, but the gardaí are usually the ones doing it on the street in Dublin. My sense is there is no need for it yet but Dublin City Council could, of course, create by-laws restricting public consumption of whatever substance it wants. There are things it may choose.

One thing I would say, and Ms Sentance also mentioned this, is from a strategic perspective, to maintain public trust in a project like decriminalisation and harm reduction, we have to bring in rules that empower gardaí to move people along and seize substances. However, when we are dealing with a situation like Dublin and other parts of Ireland where we have a large unhoused population, it is important, not necessarily in the law but at least in policy, to encourage gardaí to be considerate in how they use those powers. Most of the people they are going to come into contact with in certain parts of the city are unhoused people who are consuming drugs. That is not to say the gardaí should not use their powers to seize substances or move people along or, ideally, direct them to a supervised consumption site. The ideal would be to have spaces and facilities in place where gardaí can direct people who are publicly consuming substances to go. We can tell people to go to pubs if they want to consume alcohol but we do not have anywhere else for people to lawfully-----

I apologise for interrupting Dr. Ó Concubhair. Senator Fitzpatrick has to attend a vote in the Seanad.

I am sorry about this.

No problem.

I hope that is not too crucial a vote. I am sure the Government has a majority, as always, so I will risk it. There are two things. Our witnesses' opening statements and presentations already cover everything I want to hear. The Cathaoirleach’s questions specifically got into the crux of some of the conversations we have been having around sections 3 and 15.

On Dr. Ó Concubhair's point around a drug dealer moving small quantities of drugs, it is quite hilarious when those things are put forward. I do not know whether it is fears the authorities have from their own bias or a sense of fear around change that they are projecting. We know the drugs market is one of the most successful markets in the world. It corrects itself extremely quickly when drugs are taken off the market. It does not rely on small quantities to make things work. The session we have next week will be very important. Some of the witnesses talked about the role the media plays when there is an absence of information and confidence in how we speak about reforms that are made and can be made.

I am glad Dr. Ó Concubhair brought up the situation in the UK. It is very good to have that on the record about the police in the UK. Over the years, I have been lucky enough to spend periods of time with some of the leads who led out from that in terms of their own districts. They were doing it because the Government was not acting. They would prefer, obviously, for the law to be changed but they acted almost in rebelliousness to the law that exists because they recognised it did not work for them. Some Attorneys General in the States have done that as well, where they have started refusing to prosecute particular communities because there is a vacuum in the change in the law.

I would love to hear from each speaker on what Dr. Marder mentioned around the harms from policy. We talk about drug harms all the time, which can sometimes lead to people being concerned about the harm of a drug rather than the harms of the policies themselves. We need to be very clear what drug decriminalisation is not about. If it happens, it happens, but it does not reduce drug use. Its intention is not to reduce drug use. Its intention is to reduce the harms associated with criminal justice responses to people who use drugs. Does anyone have any comments to make on why policies are harmful and whether that is what we should be looking at, instead of always getting caught up on the type of drug and that kind of thing?

I thank the Senator. If we were to decriminalise with a view to reducing the harms caused by criminal justice, what we might be looking to achieve would include not giving people convictions on their record. If someone comes in and is given a conviction for the first time, that can affect their ability to travel or get employment. My colleagues at Maynooth University, Dr. Joe Garrihy and Dr. Ciara Bracken-Roach, have a number of projects where they are looking at the challenges around people with convictions accessing employment and higher education. These are both really important things in terms of what we know about desistance from crime. If we want people who commit a lot of crime when they are young or young adults to stop committing crime over time, what we want is there to be easy access to employment and things like higher education. That makes it a lot more difficult.

There is also a significant stigma attached to that around going to court and the problems people have when they have a conviction, such as how they are treated, especially if they have spent time in prison. Whether or not they are likely to access treatment also depends on how they feel about their treatment options. Indeed, some important recent research just came out, which spoke to people who use drugs and are unhoused in Dublin. A study came out a couple of weeks ago that found that:

In addition to widely reported barriers to recovery such as limited access to housing, clients' recovery progress was blocked by unaddressed physical and psychological health conditions, and by harmful attitudes and beliefs about themselves, their substance use and their treatment options.

The study also stated, “Societal stigma perpetuated those harmful beliefs and unfair access to recovery resources.” It is important to distinguish between different types of drugs and use as well because when we are thinking about reducing the health harms, those are very concentrated among people who use particular types of drugs in particular types of communities. If that kind of stigma is experienced by people who have addictions to opiates and experience homelessness, those people might be among the most likely to experience the most acute harms. This is despite the fact that of all the people who use drugs, a person in that situation might be the most likely to have a number of convictions. We might think how additional convictions could reduce access to employment or education any more than has already been done, but it still creates a stigma that makes people less likely to access those evidence-based treatments. There is an opportunity cost from preventing evidence-based approaches to reduce health-related harms and there is also the amount of resourcing that goes into prosecuting people, both policing resources and also court resources.

I might just say something about the court resources if that is okay.

Dr. Marder might just leave some time for Ms Sentance if that is okay.

There are a few things I want to say, some of which I addressed a bit in the opening statement, about the health harms around drugs and how they are very much moderated by criminalisation. It is quite helpful sometimes to think about really practical examples. Basic harm reduction advice would always be things you see in every drugs service, things like start low, go slow with your drug use; and crush, dab, wait. They are practices that reduce the chance of overdose. They are about trying to get people to reduce their dosage to reduce the chance of overdose. There is a growing practice around people doing something that is often called pre-loading. This is where people do all of their dose or do a double dose before they get to a venue or festival. There was a survey of festival-goers in Australia which found that 50% of the people doing that were specifically doing so because of the fear of seeing police at that festival. These are recognised, public health approaches that are meant to mitigate the harms of drug use. They are being completely undercut by fears of criminal intervention. That is the same for the conditions in which many people are injecting. Because of wanting to avoid police detection, they might use alone, which is also against a basic tenet of harm reduction, not to use alone. They are also doing it quickly because they do not want to be exposed for long, so people are much less likely to follow what would be standard advice of cleaning the injection site before and after. This is particularly important for people who are homeless. There are all these very recognised public health approaches, based on harm reduction, around mitigating the risk of drug use or protective behaviours around drug use, which are really hard to do when we are operating under criminalisation. That is what I mean when I say the risks of drug use are fundamentally changed by that.

Another illustration of this is that at Release UK we have worked for a long time with a group of patients who have been on diamorphine. Dr. Marder mentioned heroin-assisted treatment at the beginning. In Britain, there was a practice of prescribing diamorphine in the 1990s and early 2000s. That was for people for whom methadone was just not working. It was about giving people alternative treatment options. We have worked with a number of those patients. They are on pharmaceutical heroin, often on what would be considered quite high doses. When they are getting it without having to interact with a criminal market and without being at risk of criminalisation, those people are leading what would conventionally be seen as perfectly functional lives. They have jobs. They might be primary caregivers. They have housing. In recent years, when I was working with those patients four or five years ago, there were a number of shortages of that medication which triggered some people to have to re-engage with the criminal market. Being exposed to police again and running that kind of risk had such a dramatic effect on their quality of life, despite the fact that they were essentially using the same drug, albeit with different adulterants. It was the risks of the surrounding circumstances of how they were getting that drug that was causing all of the harms. That is quite a helpful example to think about in terms of how the risks of drug use are really inflected by the context you are getting your drugs in.

The previous drugs committee and also the justice committee in the previous term both recommended access to heroin-assisted treatment. I am glad the issue has been brought up today. Hopefully, this committee can do the same.

Just to return to the by-laws versus legislation, which is very interesting, in an ideal world I think it would be a perfect solution. I was a councillor in Fingal before I was elected to the Dáil and there are by-laws for everything - dogs, sanitary services, beaches, you name it - and none of them are implemented. There are already by-laws about drinking in public spaces and my local park is party central, particularly at the weekend and particularly with young people. The authorities do not have the manpower to resource and implement the by-laws that are already there. I am not sure the proposal on by-laws is a fix. It makes perfect but I just do not know how a by-law would replace legislation in terms of what we are talking about. I do think it would be a perfect solution if it was possible to implement it, but it is not. It is all public places, like parks, football pitches which could be in the middle of nowhere, or it could be in housing estates at the back of shops. That is really my question. Do the witnesses think by-laws would be a good alternative to actual legislation? The police can enforce legislation but it is up to the councils to enforce the by-laws in most cases.

What I was suggesting, if we take the model of the by-laws for alcohol consumption, gardaí can enforce those as well. It is perfectly permissible for a council to empower the Garda to enforce certain by-laws, and other people as well. It does not have to be the Garda. Other agents of the local authority can enforce by-laws restricting public consumption of alcohol. On the issue the Deputy describes of non-enforcement, it is the same with section 3 at the moment. The reason people are complaining about public consumption of drugs in Dublin city centre is there is a limit to how much the Garda can enforce that. There are hard limits on the capacity of the State to enforce certain laws. That is an inevitability unless you want to live in a totalitarian state. Within a democratic state such as ours, we are going to have inevitable enforcement gaps. However, if a council and a local community are making enough noise about an issue, what we understand is that the Garda will respond. Even if they are not necessarily empowered to respond to particular public issues, the gardaí are very good at coming in, making their presence felt and disrupting activities. The issue is not the law in that situation, whether it is a by-law or primary legislation. The issue the Deputy is highlighting really is capacity on the part of the local authorities. I am very sympathetic to this. I think Irish public authorities are radically under-resourced. I would not say the issue is that if we remove section 3, we are going to have a legal problem. We are going to have the exact same capacity issue that we have now. The Garda could be empowered to enforce by-laws very easily.

In terms of whether we need to do by-laws, it is possible that the State could create primary legislation to prohibit public consumption of drugs in all public areas. There would be problems with that. One of the big ones I would have is that there may be circumstances where you want to permit public consumption, for example, to create outdoor spaces where people can consume drugs in a safe way. Policymakers may want to identify a particular outdoor space in a particular park at a particular time, to pilot public consumption in certain parks on certain days, instead of providing more generally for public consumption space because we have limited capacity.

That is my concern. If we have a by-law that prohibits this in any public space, that then turns it around to everyone being open to being criminalised in any open space.

Only if they are consuming in public. If we remove section 3, people can carry drugs. If we created by-laws to restrict it, that would only be for public consumption and generally only that someone refused to obey Garda directions to stop it. As the alcohol by-laws are enforced, the Garda will typically only escalate when someone is refusing to comply with a direction to stop consuming and dispose of the alcohol. I do not have the data on enforcement but An Garda Síochána does a very good job of policing Dublin city centre around public consumption of alcohol. It is quite restrained. I do not see any reason the Garda would not apply the same approach to drug consumption.

Apologies, I had to step out because of another committee commitment. I thought it was only going to be for two minutes but it was much longer. I am conscious an awful lot has been said already and I will read back over those interactions in the Official Report. For me, there is the technical aspect of repeal of section 3 and how that might be done. One of the aspects I am really interested in is policing culture. Both our guests have touched on that.

I thank the witnesses for their contributions today and congratulate Dr. Marder on becoming an Irish citizen. That research with gardaí in the Cabra-Blanchardstown area is obviously very important. This is a question I put to Professor Alex Stevens when he presented to the committee. There is a dramatic impact for a police force when legislation is changed in the manner that some of us are proposing to do here. Will Dr. Marder talk a little about what he has understood regarding that process? This is if a force that is hardwired for 50 years for a war on drugs is suddenly permitting consumption or casting a blind eye to consumption. I would be interested to hear Dr. Marder's thoughts on that. He talked about the study in Blanchardstown. Dr. Ó Concubhair also talked about a study that had come from England. I would like hear a bit more about their thoughts on that space. I have a concern about a change in the law in that we might not necessarily be able to change policing minds as successfully.

It is that hardwiring into police culture which means that changing the law is so important. Were we to have a Garda policy that discouraged the prosecution of people for possession of drugs, or searching people where there is only a suspicion of possession for personal use, the research Dr. Ó Concubhair mentioned from England suggests there is still a significant amount of Garda discretion that is applied in order to maintain the criminalisation approach. If the intention is to avoid people being prosecuted, or searched and prosecuted, for possession, then it is quite important to remove that from the law as a possibility. However, as Dr. Ó Concubhair talked about when going through the aspects of the Misuse of Drugs Act, there is still a challenge under decriminalisation around how the Garda will use its remaining powers, which include to stop and search someone on reasonable suspicion of possession for sale and supply.

There are significant cultural differences between the police in Ireland and some of the police forces in England and Wales. One of the big differences is that in England and Wales there are 43 separate police forces and the cultures within those vary quite significantly. While there are some, as Dr. Ó Concubhair described, very good practices and policies within some of those forces, there is a lot of variation within that. In a sense, we are at something of an advantage here because a change at the national level attends to the entire police force. However, if it is left at the discretion of police, we have seen that there will be prosecutions for possession.

We have recently seen some statistics. Cynthia Ní Mhurchú MEP submitted an FOI request to the courts and found the statistic of over 3,900 prosecutions for drug possession in the District Court in 2025. That is under a situation where An Garda Síochána has said, at this committee and in other situations, it is not going after people for drug possession. A separate FOI went in from one of the Deputy's colleagues, which looked specifically at the number of people issued with a charge or summons for cannabis possession between December 2020 and February 2024. The December 2020 date was selected because that was the date from which the adult caution began to apply to cannabis use. In that three-and-a-half year period, 17,125 people were issued with a charge or summons for cannabis possession. That is under a situation where the Garda policy had changed to allow for a caution to be given.

One of the challenges we have here, which makes decriminalisation at the national and legal level particularly important, is that England and Wales have a much more sophisticated structure around diversion. In Ireland, the only formal diversionary approach open to the Garda when the suspect is an adult is the adult caution and that is not used very much at all. I do not have the statistics here on the number of cases but there was an excellent report from the Law Society that came out recently, which compared the number of prosecutions across the Irish court system to that in other countries in Europe. That found Ireland uses prosecutions at a much higher rate. In other words, there is a much lower level of resolving crime outside of court in Ireland compared to comparable European countries.

In England and Wales, for example, they have a national structure for police diversion that includes a number of different options. One option is called the community resolution, which is when something is recorded as having been resolved informally. The chances of that being disclosed are extremely slim on a records check. Also, a lot of police in England and Wales use a conditional caution. That is not something that exists in the Irish system. It means the caution or the diversion from court is conditional on various referrals being made and adhered to and other conditions. That allows sophisticated forces resolve quite serious crime outside of court, including sale and supply of heroin where the suspect is supplying because they have an addiction themselves, or in cases of serious violence where there is a mental health issue underpinning it. These types of offences are resolved outside of court where a person adheres to a number of conditions that includes not reoffending.

This is underpinned by an existing, very sophisticated structure of collaboration between the police and the NHS, where at that conditional-caution level there is a programme called liaison and diversion. That is not a system we have here. It is a system where the NHS is empowered, and the police are empowered specifically, to enable referrals to be made for various types of crime where there is a health issue underpinning it and if that health issue were resolved, it would address the offending behaviour. Relying on tweaking existing adult-offender diversionary powers here is going to be very disappointing, I think.

I will raise something slightly different. One of the concerns around section 3 specifically in Ireland, and the Garda Inspectorate looked at this in 2014, is that we know it is being abused by gardaí. Gardaí are justifying stop-and-search and using section 3 in circumstances where they do not have a reasonable suspicion that someone is in possession. That is in the Garda Inspectorate report from 2014. I am very happy to provide that. The Garda Inspectorate looked at use of section 3, including the volume. It did an estimate on the volume of use, which put use of section 3 stop-and-search in Ireland at a higher rate than the Metropolitan Police use in London. One of the lines I often hear from talking to gardaí is that gardaí do not use their search powers like they are used in other jurisdictions. As far as we know, that is not accurate. From the only information we have from the Garda Inspectorate, gardaí use their search powers a lot.

One of the people the committee invited today who could not attend is Dr. Kath Murray from Scotland. She looked at this in Scotland as well. Scotland did not gather data on its stop-and-search powers for many years. When it began doing it, the assumption was its police did not use their search powers very much. When they looked at the data, however, they were using it at rates many times greater than police were in England and Wales. We do not gather data routinely on stop-and-search powers, so we have no idea. The suggestion is that it is used quite a lot.

The 2014 report specifically stated these powers were being abused. The reason for that is it is almost impossible to challenge. When somebody ends up in court, often, they have been stopped and searched for drugs. They do not have drugs on them, but they may resist arrest because they are annoyed they are being stopped and searched and it is a humiliating and degrading experience. They will be brought to court and prosecuted for a public order offence. Part of the argument might be that the search itself was unlawful, but it is almost impossible for that to succeed. It is very hard to challenge a garda claim that they reasonably suspect someone is in possession of drugs because that garda can say, "I smell cannabis". In England and Wales, the College of Policing guidance is that the smell of cannabis should not be the basis for reasonable suspicion for a stop-and-search because it understands these specific powers are abused.

There is a good reason to remove section 3 aside from wanting to avoid stigmatising drug users.

There is a harm reduction rationale for removing section 3. One of the things it does is to encourage bad policing practices. At the beginning, the Deputy asked about drug-related intimidation, which is a very serious issue in this jurisdiction. It is not a new issue, I should say. It has been prevalent for the past 40 or 50 years, but we talk about it more now and the Garda is trying to address it more, which is very positive. One of the issues that An Garda Síochána faces in communities is the very low level of trust. People do not trust the Garda to resolve these issues. One of the reasons for that is a research concept of the paradox of over-policing and under-policing at the same time. What we see in this jurisdiction and many other jurisdictions is that vulnerable communities are at the same time over-policed and under-policed. They are usually over-policed in terms of drug enforcement. For most Garda searches under section 3, we can be confident in saying that they are targeting particularly deprived areas rather than wealthy areas. It is very unlikely that you are going to be stopped and searched on the street in Ranelagh whereas if you go to certain areas of Tallaght, it might be very different. There are certain areas of Dublin city where if you are a young man, you are going to experience drug policing very differently. We know those drug policing practices have a toxic effect on police trust in a community. The Garda is doing things that will compromise its ability to do other types of policing practice because it is undermining trust.

Some of the drivers of drug policing practices in this jurisdiction and other jurisdictions relate to the clearance rate. Drug enforcement is useful from a crude statistical perspective because you do not have people complaining about drug offences. You do not have victims, per se, or people making complaints so the clearance rate for a drug offence is almost perfect. It is 99%, as compared with other offences where someone makes a complaint, gardaí have to go and investigate it and the clearance rate is considerably lower. There are, unfortunately, incentives within policing in this jurisdiction and other jurisdictions which encourage gardaí and other police to go out and do street-level drug enforcement to improve their detection statistics. What that does is to compromise trust in the community and to make it much more difficult to deal with things such as drug-related intimidation because there is an underlying lack of trust in An Garda Síochána.

Some of the trust issues are not related to that and are around security provision. The Garda does not have the capacity to provide security to people who want to come forward. That is a separate issue but it is not unrelated. The Greentown project in Limerick has considered the issue and published findings recently which show there are very low levels of trust in police among working-class males. That can compromise the ability of the Garda to do other kinds of policing.

Has the Chair already asked his questions?

I have asked my questions in the first round.

That is grand. I am conscious of time. I am struck by the paradox of over-policing and under-policing. I engage with some very progressive police in our drugs squad in Dublin. There may be others. In respect of the 2014 Garda Inspectorate report, has there been any updated review? No other research has been undertaken.

Those are the most recent data that have been published on the number of stops and searches conducted by police in Ireland.

On this issue of abuse, one of the reasons the Garda misuses section 3, according to the Garda Inspectorate report, is that the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offence) Act 2001, which governs theft, robbery and armed robbery, bizarrely does not contain a search power. The way we currently structure our Garda search powers is that we do not have a general Garda search power. Search powers are attached to individual offences. That is why there is a search power in the 1977 Act. In the Dublin metropolitan region, there is an older piece of law which empowers gardaí to search people they suspect of committing an offence of theft. Outside Dublin, they do not have that power. The workaround has been to say you suspect that someone is in possession of drugs. If you speak to barristers who work in crime outside Dublin, that is pretty common.

One of the reasons the power is being misused is that there is a gap in the legislation. The proposed Garda Síochána (Powers) Bill that is currently before the Oireachtas seeks to create a general power. No longer will the Garda have to look to a particular piece of legislation. There will be a general power when gardaí suspect that someone is committing or has committed a serious, arrestable offence. They will be empowered with general powers. It is a significant change that will address the problem with the 2001 Act. That gap in legislation will be filled if this legislation goes ahead as planned. I have written about it. I am in support of a general power. There are other benefits, too, because it will make all these powers subject to a reasonable suspicion. We have not reasonable suspicion but subjective suspicion powers in other parts of our legislation. It is a good reform if it comes through and it should address the issue.

Mr. Nick Glynn, a retired police officer who was before the committee in 2024 on the same day I was here, made the important point that removing section 3 will not address abusive practices by the police. As he said, there will always be a way. If you are concerned about abusive policing practices around drugs policing, which I am concerned about and we have a lot of evidence that it is a big problem, removing section 3 will not address that. You need to have deeper engagement with the culture of police around this. There are ways. The data that has come out of London over the years, and London probably has the most sophisticated data on police stop and search, shows that what really changes things is political pressure. If there is political pressure to reduce stop and search, stop and search will be reduced. If there is political pressure to increase stop and search, stop and search will go up. The ball is in politicians' court here. An Garda Síochána, like all police forces, is highly responsive to political or perceived political pressure to do things in a particular way. For example, in the aftermath of the November 2023 riots, there was a perception that An Garda Síochána had lost control of the streets. What did it do? It deployed very significant numbers to do reassurance policing, but, unfortunately, it also used it as an opportunity to go out and do a lot of drugs policing. Nearly all the arrests were to do with drug possession. Almost all the arrests in the immediate aftermath of the November 2023 riots were to do with drug possession. I do not fully understand the relationship between drug possession and the riots. This is one of the dynamics that we are concerned with but that will not necessarily be addressed even if there is decriminalisation.

That is really helpful. I thank the witnesses for those contributions.

I will finish my round of questions. I will ask Ms Sentance about consumption rooms. We do not have consumption rooms in this jurisdiction. We have a single safe injection facility that has not been open long. Will she tell us what consumption rooms are, where in the UK they are based and who uses them?

I thank the Cathaoirleach. A drug consumption room is just an interchangeable term. There are many different terms, including "overdose prevention sites", "drug consumption rooms" and "supervised injecting facilities". You could call what is in Dublin a "drug consumption room".

The facility in Dublin is only for intravenous drug users.

Yes, exactly.

More broadly, who uses consumption rooms and what are they using?

The key distinction, if you were to describe drug consumption rooms is that they are generally for a more wide-ranging group of drugs. It could be for inhalation. I believe that in Germany there are a number of drug consumption rooms that are not limited to injecting. The same is true in Canada and the US. I am questioning myself, but I do not believe that the facilities in those countries are limited to injecting. We do not have any in England. The Thistle opened in Scotland, but I believe it is just limited to injecting. There would be very strong arguments towards extending that to other drugs, particularly given the concerns that have been raised about public drug use. One of the major concerns, for example, which is probably quite similar to what was being said about the smell of weed in Oregon, was the concern about the smell of fentanyl, which has quite a distinctive smell. That can push people to begin injecting because they are worried about the social stigma surrounding the smell of smoking fentanyl. If those people have access to a drug consumption room where they can also smoke, it can make things more manageable.

I believe there is also a drug consumption room in Barcelona, Spain, that is not just limited to injecting. It is about giving people a range of options that are not prescribing that they use drugs in a particular way.

Perfect. I thank Ms Sentance. I want to ask Dr. Marder about drug-related intimidation. In answer to a question he was asked, he said some evidence suggests it is people selling drugs who have drugs seized by the Garda and then find themselves on the receiving end of drug-related intimidation. As a committee tasked with making recommendations for making things safer, what do we do in that scenario? It is quite a challenge for us, given drug-related intimidation is quite insidious at the moment. It has always been with us, as we have been told, but the evidence has increased since 2001 in terms of investigations around it. We also have evidence it is more rural than it ever was before. How would we as a committee or as a legislative body go about addressing that issue?

I should be direct about the fact drug-related intimidation is not my main area of work. I recommend that the committee speak to experts who have conducted research in this area, particularly Dr. Johnny Connolly from UL and Dr. Matt Bowden from TU Dublin. They have both conducted rural and urban primary research in recent years on drug-related intimidation. While I have some familiarity with their work, I would say they would be good sources of information.

The committee will contact them.

I would also add the caveat that I am not an academic expert in that area, but it is something I come across a lot in legal casework around housing. This will be relatively specific to the English context but lots of it will carry across. We often have people who are using, typically opioids. They are dependent, having a difficult time with their drug use and financially vulnerable. Their homes are sometimes targeted. One of the major barriers to the person getting out of that situation is the lack of access to alternative housing. I can think of a number of cases where the person has been evicted from their accommodation because they have experienced drug-related intimidation. They are evicted and might have a closure order on their property, so they are no longer allowed to access it. They then try to access state assistance and come across a number of barriers, though I cannot presume all of these would carry across. They might be denied assistance by the local authority because of issues of perceived intentionality around their homelessness. Another major thing that I think will carry across is the person will then struggle to get into alternative housing because of low-tolerance policies in housing providers, which is no doubt furthered by the criminal framework around section 3 because there is a lot of anxiety among people running those providers about criminal liability if they are seen to permit that to be going on. That is something I have come across a lot. As I am sure the committee has already considered, housing policy is a massive aspect of this in terms of giving people a route out of situations of drug intimidation, which often are based in people's homes.

I thank Ms Sentance. That brings our meeting to an end. This was really helpful and useful, and was clearly engaging for members. I thank Dr. Ó Concubhair, Dr. Marder and Ms Sentance for bringing their expertise to the committee. We have really benefited from it.

Thank you so much for having me.