Sir, Within hours of publication, different RTE news bulletins were introducing the £14m Government Report on Drugs as receiving a negative response from "those working with addicts". How "those working with addicts" could, have read the report before giving their "nothing new or nothing concrete" verdict beats me. In the event, "those working with addicts" turned out to be Mr Tony Geoghegan. who works with the Merchants Quay project.
I fail to see how Mr Geoghegan can describe the provision of £14m by the Government to implement a wide range of recommendations as nothing concrete (RTE shorthand for Mr Geoghegan's "long on aspirations and short on specifics"). This is especially puzzling since Mr Geoghegan told me on July 7th in the "Saturday View" studio, that the problem "immediately needed live million pounds".
Secondly, Mr Geoghegan didn't tell RTE or, if he did, RTE certainly didn't tell its listeners that by "nothing new" he means there are no proposals concerning decriminalisation (as he made clear later that night on the Late Late Show. The terms of the earlier Government decision did not permit the ministerial committee, of which I am chairman, to examine the decriminalisation issue.
Mr Geoghegan is entitled to hold whatever views he likes, but it seems extraordinary that his very particular views, allegedly coming from "these working with addicts", should supersede the very specific recommendations in the report itself. RTE for some weeks now has (quite properly) been, running dramatic and disturbing film of anti drugs protests. Is it unreasonable to have expected the national broadcasting service to have subjected a Government approved report to a little more analysis than a phone call to one individual at Merchants Quay? Yours, etc..
Ministerial Chairman.
Committee on
Measures to Reduce the
Demand to Drugs,
Department of Enterprise and Employment,
Kildare Street,
Dublin 2.