Parents, teachers pay to bring drugs experts to schools.

The committee also heard claims that local drug task forces (LDTFs) had become too bureaucratic and had forgotten the wider community in which they operated.

Fine Gael TD John O’Mahony told the committee on Arts, Sport and Community Affairs that when he was a teacher there was no funding to get drug experts in under the Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE) course, which was supposed to deal with drug issues.

“The school had to fund it or students had to collect €10 each,” he told Minister of State John Curran, who coordinates the National Drugs Strategy (NDS) and who addressed the committee.

The Mayo deputy said he knew of teachers who paid for the experts out of their own pockets.

Mr Curran said he had heard of this problem during consultations his department was having as part of developing a new NDS, covering the period 2009-2016.

Fine Gael TD Catherine Byrne, the party’s spokeswoman on drugs, said her local community, Inchicore in Dublin’s south inner city, had been “robbed and savagely raped by the scourge of drugs”. She said the LDTFs set up to combat the problem had not involved the wider community and local groups.

She said a lot of these small groups needed funding but were being turned down by the LDTF.

FG senator Jerry Buttimer said the NDS had failed and that the State needed to utilise young people’s websites, such as YouTube, Bebo and Facebook.

The minister agreed the State had to use the tools young people were using to get the message across.

Source: Cormac O'Keefe, Irish Examiner, 25/09/2005