THE Departments of Education and Health have responded to sharp criticism by the just retired Garda Commissioner, Mr Patrick Culligan, of their records on tackling drug misuse.
Mr Culligan accused both Government Departments of "opting out of their responsibilities" in the area of drug misuse and "leaving it all to the Department of Justice and the law enforcement agencies".
He called for an intensive advertising campaign to warn young people about drugs. You get sick and tired of hearing about safe sex and condoms", he said at a passing out parade in the Garda Training College in Templemore, Co Tipperary on Thursday.
Mr Culligan maintained that the only way to tackle the drug problem was through immediate education, which would yield results in eight to 10 years.
In a statement yesterday, the Minister for Education, Ms Breathnach, replied that Mr Culligan was "absolutely right" to state the important role the Department of Education, schools and health services play in combating substance misuse. She said that she and the Department had been advancing programmes to meet this challenge over the past number of years.
Ms Breathnach pointed to the "successful" post primary substance misuse prevention in service training programme for teachers, "On My Own Two Feet", which is funded by the Departments of Health and Education. Since it was started in 1994, about 700 teachers have been trained under the programme. Another 400 have applied to receive training in the coming school year.
Ms Breathnach said she had also recently announced details of a plan for the development of the £450,000 Anti Drugs Campaign for Primary Schools, which will begin in targeted priority areas next autumn.
The campaign will include a substance abuse awareness programme for parents, teachers and local communities, educational resources for schools and in service training for teachers. It will focus on areas where there is a high incidence of substance misuse.
Ms Breathnach said she would host an international conference on substance abuse prevention in Dublin next November as part of Ireland's EU Presidency.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said she did not agree with Mr Culligan's charges and pointed to a number of substance abuse initiatives the Department has been involved in over the past few years.
These include a parent education programme on alcohol, drugs rid family communication - national youth health programme and a leadership training for primary prevention of drug misuse. The most recent initiative was the £250,000 Media Drug Misuse Prevention Campaign, inaugurated last month, which is aimed at alerting young people and parents to the dangers of drugs.
The Minister of State for Commerce, Science and Technology, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said Mr Culligan had some valid grounds for criticising the complacency of the Departments of Health and Education in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but measures had been put in place over the last couple of years which were "only now beginning to have an effect".
He said politicians and the media had to accept the implications of Mr Culligan's conclusion that the drug problem would never be solved simply by law enforcement alone and that, as long as there was a demand for drugs, somebody would supply them.
Mr Rabbitte said that the Ministerial Task Force on Measures to Reduce Demand for Drugs, of which he is chairman, was designed to put "equal emphasis on co ordinating measures to reduce the demand for drugs". The task force is due to submit its report to the Government by the end of September.
Fianna Fail's spokesman on education, Mr Micheal Martin, said Mr Culligan's comments highlighted the failure of Ms Breathnach to give top priority to substance abuse education during her term of office.