Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am going to ask a few questions before I move into a second round. There will be five minutes for the second round and Senator Seery Kearney will be first. It has been a really good session and very clear and to the point. It is interesting when I say "clear and to the point" because sometimes I listen to how colleagues pose questions and wonder whether the clarity is being felt everywhere.

When this question is repeatedly put forward, we hear that resources are needed and a framework is needed. There is a suggestion that this has to happen and if it does not happen, decriminalisation is somehow off the table. That is not what I am hearing from witnesses but I am hearing it from the questioners' side. It is a political thing because if you remove from them the baton with which they can batter people, they use the excuse that this cannot happen because there are not enough resources. It slows down the process and gives people something to hide behind when the conversation on decriminalisation comes up in terms of a legislative framework.

I do not think that is fair to the contributions I am hearing today because what I am hearing is that these things can happen in parallel and that decriminalisation itself is part of the harm reduction model. People should not continue to be criminalised while we wait on full enhanced services, and what they should be, because that could never be realised. People should not have this moral stick waved over them while we are waiting on something else to happen. It works side by side. That is very clear to me so then I ask myself whether I am mishearing it from my bias in terms of what I want to hear. Would Dr. Quinlan agree that my summary of that is correct? They go hand in hand. They are not one before the other.