Mr. António Manuel Leitão da Silva:

Definitely. I have a special team that goes three times a day with a municipality team through the places that are being used for drug use - places with syringes and other paraphernalia and equipment used by drug users. We have a police team that follows another team and goes through all these places just to reduce harm, for example, by picking up abandoned syringes. As the Leas-Chathaoirleach mentioned, decriminalisation has nothing to do with increasing or decreasing. It is up to the police to really find the strategies. My experience is that on an everyday basis, we have situations where the police are the first to respond to other situations with drug users other than criminal actions. It involves social problems, mental health problems and other diseases and the police definitely work as social workers. As I mentioned, in the paper to which I referred, police officers are not social workers. This is a big mistake that is commonly made.

We can ask police to make social working provisions in a certain perspective but police officers are not social workers. They should not replace the social response by other professionals who are fully capable of tackling these situations.