I would like to say two things. First, I endorse what my friend and colleague, Senator McCarthy, has just said about the drugs strategy and the need, in particular, to ensure that people who use drugs are also heard in this conversation. What we must never lose sight of, though, is that as a society and a collective, and I do not think people will disagree with this, the message should always be that drugs are bad for people and bad for society. I sometimes worry that in our effort to meet people where they are, as important as that is, we lose sight of the importance of keeping the message simple and clear.

What prompts this particular reflection is what I read reported in The Irish Times on St. Patrick’s Day, which was that in the context of the St. Patrick’s Day Festival festivities, part of the invitation the HSE had to give was that "anyone who uses powder and crystal forms of drugs in Ireland" should "start low and go slow". Well, that might be a very good soundbite and it might make sense to people who have harm reduction very much on their minds, but do they not realise that what they are actually doing with that kind of discourse is endorsing drug taking? This is the same as the way in which policies of checking people’s drugs at festivals and so on may be well intentioned but are hopelessly naive and this undermines the effort to curb drugs in our society with all the chaos that causes for people, not just here, but in the places abroad from where these drugs are sourced. Senator Fitzpatrick tackled me recently enough when I said that I thought the Government was soft on drugs. That is the kind of messaging, though, that says to me that the political establishment and the health establishment in this country are in some ways soft on drugs, at least on soft drugs. I think that is very bad for our society.

I will conclude by saying what I intended to start by saying, which is that it is a disgrace that it is yet again being proposed to guillotine important legislation. The parliamentary guillotine should be a method of last resort when there is genuine urgency and haste on an issue of great importance. There is time to discuss this important legislation properly, to consider amendments and to have things thoroughly gone through. There are issues of the most compelling importance at stake with this legislation and it is a disgrace and an indictment of the Government and of all who support this measure that the guillotine is being proposed here again today.