Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What we must first do is seek the tenders, find a place to locate the centres and base this on the evidence. The HSE and the committee set up through the HSE are mapping the entire centre of Dublin and the location of the facilities, where people are injecting, where they are unfortunately dying on the street and in their homes and the paraphernalia left around. All of this is centred around the inner city and the cohort in the capital city, particularly around what I would say are areas people come into because they are homeless, because of begging, because of their addiction and because of other reasons. Therefore, there is no point in putting the service out in Dún Laoghaire or anywhere similar because that is not where people are going. There is no point in providing a bus that would pull up on the side of the street and deal with people queuing and then move to another side of the street because that is not the way it should be done. These people need privacy. They need a little dignity when they go into these centres. Above all, they need to know that when they go into the centre, there are enough capable doctors and nurses and there is a wraparound service. That is what the injecting facility should be all about.

The Senators asked many questions, half of which I probably will not get through. Senator Ó Ríordáin said that no one has died in any of these injecting centres, and I reiterate that fact. Naloxone is now being distributed by families and so on, and it will be used in the services. There is every chance that people who overdose will not be found wanting because they will be in a service that will be able to react immediately to them.

I take Senator Ó Ríordáin up on one thing he said about the media and about shame surrounding addiction. He is absolutely right. The media in this country love bad news, and the bad news is often a picture of someone dead down a laneway or lying in a skip from an overdose. They love such pictures because, unfortunately, they sell newspapers. However, this is not what the Bill is about. It is about caring for people who are chronic users and who are very ill. It is a health issue, and the reality of this will be seen in the next few months. We owe these people that opportunity to be able to go into a clean and safe environment.

Senator Ruane spoke about decriminalisation, and I know she is focusing on that in a Private Members' Bill. I am glad to have the opportunity to be able to sit down and talk to her about that into the future, and sooner rather than later. One point Senator Buttimer raised concerned the work the Minister of State, Deputy David Stanton, has done examining the Portuguese model. The justice committee established how it would go forward with a health-led rather than an offence-led approach for people who have been involved in criminality in respect of illegal drugs. That work must continue. As part of the national drugs strategy, it is our intention to review the report of the steering committee of the strategy and put into it an alternative approach to responding to those who have a history of offending. I have no problem sitting down with Senator Ruane and probably people from the Department as well.