Lynn Ruane
University of Dublin · Independent · Ireland
“The chairperson of the board of the Courts Service, Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly, said that the rise in drugs cases of a less serious kind had increased the workload of the lower courts.”
“I remember I could barely write when I started studying addiction. I was 16 when I applied for an addiction studies course. They would not let me on it because they said I was too young and it was for adults. I fought and fought. I did not know how to write an essay. I had not engaged in school since I was about 12.”
“The world is watching how Ireland has done the most extensive interrogation of drugs policy ever seen, and is waiting in hope to see what we do next to make sure that we move with the evidence. It is not just opinion.”
“I join Senator McDowell in thanking all the people we should thank for the efficient and smooth running of these Houses. He ran through them all. Even if we have had a few ding-dongs over rulings on amendments and stuff, other than that, things have moved well, as they always do. I thank the staff across both Houses.”
“There are not many things I will claim some level of expertise in, but this is one where I will claim it. I have been obsessed with it since I was about 16. I look forward to coming back in the new year, and not just for 90 minutes. We need a substantial time to discuss this report, whether three hours, four hours or six hours.”
“It will contain all incidents of prohibited AI practices under Article 5 of the AI Act; all serious incidents of high-risk AI systems in the State, reported under Article 73; high-risk AI systems that are employed in critical infrastructure; and any other AI-related incidents or notifications in the State required to be reported under the…”
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“Perhaps it is time the Irish Government focused its attention on the Israeli Government, as the Taoiseach has pointed out, and the active and tangible role it can play in bringing the untold horrors and atrocities to an end. Complicity does not necessarily mean the Irish State is directly responsible for the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people but, through our action and inaction, we are empowering the agitator. Complicity in these contexts means we can be indirectly responsible for the wrongdoing caused by others. We are. Let us remind ourselves of the sheer and shocking scale of the wrongs. More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. The vast majority of these are civilian casualties.”
“The definition of epistemic complicity suggests a secondary agent is epistemically complicit in a principal harm or wrongdoing if they causally contribute to the epistemic harm or wrongdoing voluntarily or non-accidentally. Choosing not to inspect aircraft is non-accidental; it is a decision we make. The definition also states a person is epistemically complicit if they make the contribution knowingly, or culpably ignorantly, and know or are culpably ignorant that the principal harm or wrongdoing they contribute to is epistemically wrong or harmful. Therefore, we are complicit in every sense of the definition in respect of what passes through our airspace or the planes we choose to inspect. The Israeli Government is not accountable to the Irish people; the Irish Government is.”
“The Taoiseach also argued that people should focus their attention on the Israeli Government. Again, this was an interesting statement. Of course, he is right. The thousands upon thousands of people in Ireland who have demonstrated and called for this Bill to be passed today, and who are outside the gates of Leinster House each day, are well attuned to the reality of where blame lies regarding Israel’s role in genocide. However, that should not let anyone off the hook. Why is the Government not placing the blame squarely where it lies in relation to Israel? In my reading last night, I came across material on what people understand complicity to be. Many of us understand allowing weapons or dual-use goods to pass through our airspace to be complicity.”
“When thinking about why people make decisions on exemptions, even though they may not hold a particular moral position on a situation, and about the actions in relation to discretion or whether we should inspect planes when passing through Ireland, I was quite struck by the Taoiseach’s comments in the Dáil yesterday. In light of the arms embargo Bill and related Bills, those comments really made me think about why the Government may be finding ways to evade making decisions on carrying out inspections. In the Dáil yesterday, the Taoiseach, Deputy Martin, referred to the assertion of the State’s complicity in genocide in Palestine as a great old slogan. He compared the assertion of complicity to a slogan and that really got me thinking about what we understand complicity to mean when deciding on what should go through our airspace.”
“It makes absolutely no sense and it is a complete violation. It seems like it was a tool to shame and control people who wanted to show solidarity outside this House at the weekend.”
“If they can receive a caution for doing something peaceful, how terrified will they be to show solidarity in any protest ever again? The chilling effect this will have on protest in and of itself is something we need to question, because we are now not only using force to police women when it is not necessary but also having a negative effect on the ability of people to show solidarity, protest or hold a vigil. Will the Leader request from the Minister details of the policy on policing protests and using strip searches? I know strip searches are related to whether people will be going into a cell, but if gardaí are coming from a peaceful protest where women were sitting down singing songs, surely their discretion and judgment will tell them a strip search is not necessary for those women.”
“People were sitting there with photographs, singing, and being together. The fact is they were arrested, put into the back of a Garda van and brought to three different police stations, where three different approaches were taken in each police station. Some of the women were strip-searched, including visual cavity strip-searches following a peaceful protest outside the Parliament. Many of them were offered a caution. If a person accepts a caution, it means he or she must not come before the Garda again for three years. Imagine the chilling effect that has on protest, on anyone who wants to show solidarity or on people who want to stand outside Leinster House and show they care about something in a particular way.”
“I want to speak about the weekend and the policing of the protest outside this building, which was really a vigil. Mother's Day is a celebration for some but for others it is quite a complex day, such as the women and children of Gaza. I refer to the fact that the world would show solidarity with them, that women would give up their day to come and spend time outside Leinster House and show solidarity with mothers who have lost their children and children who have lost their mothers, intentionally, in a purposeful annihilation of women and children in Gaza. Given the response from a policing perspective, we must ask questions about what decisions are being made, how they are made and when force is used in spite of there being no force inflicted outside the gates of Leinster House. It was a peaceful protest. There was no violence used.”
“While we welcome what has been offered, I ask the Minister of State to ensure it is communicated very strongly that the capitation grant needs to be doubled for this school to be able to continue and to be able to give kids in Killinarden what they deserve in terms of their education so they can flourish.”
“I thank the Minister of State. This is a school I went to as a child. I spent all my primary years there. One of my teachers, Ms Bridget Clare, is here today for the debate. It is a very important school, and I urge the Minister of State to communicate to the Department the need for a year-on-year doubling of the capitation grant, and not just this interim investment. It helps and is welcome but there needs to be a long-term plan. The deputy principal in the junior side of the school teaches full time. There is no way for them to have access to an actual deputy principal. This is in a school where protection issues often come up and there are many highly complex needs.”
“I ask the Minister of State for an update on the DEIS band plus system and what we can expect to see in that regard. Will that meet the needs of the school? A school with a smaller population of students - there are 117 pupils - will advance children far more than having to fill a school with more pupils. A double capitation grant would do that.”
“Not only are the kids losing out in terms of what they should be getting educationally, they are now also losing out in what they should be getting in terms of extra needs. This is a community that has a lot of complex needs. The potential closure of the school is not something that should be taken lightly. Some people may argue that there are other schools close by or the children can attend a school down the road. However, the closure of the school would threaten the safety of the community, including children. I hope that, rather than the Minister of State responding with a short-term solution such as the advancement of funding to keep the school open temporarily, we look to DEIS band 1 plus. Some schools deal with many more additional needs than other DEIS schools. We need a solution that provides the proper care for those schools.”
“Our community experiences a lot of hardship and the school is the most consistent place that we will experience throughout our day. Even beyond the education piece, we have to look at the fact that the SNAs in the school are local women. We know that everybody is minding and looking out for each other. The school originally catered for 400 children and the population of the school has decreased. The Minister for Education, Deputy McEntee, has engaged on this matter and has said she will provide an advance in capitation funding, but this is a short-term solution when we need bigger picture thinking. The school needs double capitation. Currently, it is using its DEIS funding to pay bills and bridge gaps. This funding was used to pay for art and music therapies and additional extracurricular activities.”
“The Minister of State is very welcome. It is not often that I have raised a local issue in the Chamber since I became a Senator in 2016, but this is an issue that is extremely close to my heart. Scoil An Chroí Ró Naofa Sóisir in Killinarden is facing serious financial trouble. The school opened in 1980 and now caters to three generations of the Killinarden community. Killinarden is an extremely tight community. We look after each other. What we do not have in financial and social capital, we have in human capital in terms of how we care for each other. That a school that understands the context and historic nature of the community in the way this school does could potentially close is not just a travesty in terms of the children's education but a threat to the social cohesion and fabric of the community.”
“I ask that we have an honest conversation, not only around domestic violence and refuges, but about who is making decisions about who has a right to actually access safety.”
“She was seeking safety as a woman, under a threat to her life, in a domestic abuse situation. She is now in a bedsit with three teenage children. She is still paying rent on the house that is boarded up. The council bureaucracy is now saying it will not move her into other accommodation unless it is like for like, because it was a two-bedroom unit. Women who are already in a very unsafe situation are being told that, because of their socioeconomic background or their experiences with addiction, refuges care about their safety, just not enough to make sure to put them in a better position. To have the Garda request someone leave her house is a big threshold to meet. That person is now in a one-bedroom bedsit with three children she is not able to get into school.”
“Right now, there are refuges saying they will not take women in who are experiencing any sort of addiction issues, be those issues lived or living. Services working with women are not referring them to those refuges out of fear of highlighting that they may be linked in with them for supports in respect of substance use. During one phone call to a refuge, the woman on the other end of the line said the refuge had to think about the safety of the women and children in the refuge. Hang on a minute. That is saying that a woman, because she has some experience with substance use, is somehow a threat to the women and children in that refuge, those apartments or whatever the setup. It is completely wrong. In another situation, a woman had left her house in a working class community at the request of the Garda under a threat to life notice.”
“Today I want to raise two separate but interrelated issues. It is international women's week. However, throughout the whole year, we talk about domestic violence. We constantly see articles and news reports online about the number of women who have died in the country. What I am facing at the moment in terms of supporting women is that it is not only about safety, but the decisions that are being made about who has a right to safety. Currently, women in addiction who are trying to flee domestic violence are being faced with a question around substance use when looking to access refuges. They are being denied safety because of substance use. It is already hard enough to leave a domestic violence situation before we layer on issues in relation to poverty, social class, addiction, lack of support, lack of quality housing and so on.”
“It was a Government decision to have that committee, which means that the interim report and its contents have support from all parties and none. That should also set a basis for the consultation. I will email any other outstanding questions to the Minister of State directly.”
“I appreciate that. It teases out the difference between the evaluation and the consultation. I have some queries that I will follow up on with the Minister of State regarding the consultation, as some people felt that the Department was very top down instead of asking the community and inviting people in, so the community and voluntary sectors did not get to set the parameters of what that consultation looked like, meaning it was a little tight and was not kept open ended. It is good to hear that the citizens' assembly report will be taken into consideration rather than the submissions being examined again. The Minister of State might request that the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use interim report on drugs be taken into consideration because that was the next step after the citizens' assembly.”
“If anything, it is that report of the citizens' assembly that should have formed some sort of part of the consultation, rather than going back a step to the 800 submissions from the wider public to the citizens' assembly. Is it the final report of the citizens' assembly and the work of the Oireachtas joint committee that will be looked at to form part of the consultation with the wider community and voluntary sector?”
“They will also want to carry the strategy forward because they will be able to see that their voices have been heard within it. The other question I have concerns with is the citizens' assembly. We have had it and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use. There was word that, potentially, the submissions to the citizens' assembly were going to be used as part of the consultation for the national drugs strategy. This seems like an odd step to take, so I just want to clarify if this is the case. I ask this because it was the role of the citizens' assembly to evaluate those 800 submissions and following that evaluation, it came up with its report.”
“In the past, there was the evaluation that allowed for consideration of where we are at in regard to the previous drugs strategy and then a steering group and independent chair were put in place. I think, last time, his name was John Carr. That worked really well because we had that independent aspect of the evaluation of the drugs strategy. Another question, then is: who is overseeing the evaluation? Is there a steering group? Is there an independent chair? Will there be a wider consultation process with the wider community and voluntary sector to ensure we have as representative a sample as we can across the country concerning the drugs strategy. We know drugs strategies will be more successful if the people who are supposed to feed into them feed into them.”
“We want to know if that conversation was the consultation and if it is complete, or if there is going to be a wider consultation where community development projects and drugs services can invite in their members to be part of the consultation. Going to the evaluation aspect, is potentially under way with Grant Thornton. I do not know if Grant Thornton is doing the consultation - that is one question - or if the company is just doing the evaluation of the last strategy. They seem to have come in reverse a little bit. We are not sure if what has happened with the Department is being said to be the consultation and there will be no wider consultation, and then the evaluation will come after.”
“The general feedback from some services is the national oversight committee has been brought in potentially for some departmental consultation regarding the drug strategy. The feeling, though, is that is very much a top-tier conversation. In the past, we did have to work hard - maybe two or three strategies ago - to ensure that community as a pillar remained in the text of the drugs strategy. We have had to hold on to this element very strongly. In relation, then, to engagement on the consultation process, to have it only with the implementation groups or the national oversight committee would mean the general population of the community and voluntary sector would not get to engage with Grant Thornton in this regard.”
“I thank the Acting Chairperson. I thank the Minister of State for being here. I am sure we will see a lot of each other over the next four years. I know she is aware this is an issue and an area I have focused on throughout not only my legislative career but also by working in addiction services since the age of 17. When I am not in the Chamber, I am still very much involved with community projects. I still have friends and family who rely on drugs services. A lot of my peers and colleagues also work in the services. The general feeling at the moment is confusion in relation to the national drugs strategy and the steps that have been, and are being, taken in not only the evaluation of the drugs strategy we are just coming out of but also the consultation process for the development of the new drugs strategy.”
“If we want to get to the root causes of why violence becomes so normalised in people’s lives, we need to blow the conversation open a little so that we can work in a targeted way and interrupt violence within communities rather than just locking people up or calling for more prisons.”
“We must be a lot more open about how we engage with the topic so that, when we are considering legislative responses, we ensure we invest in communities and set up evidence-based violence intervention initiatives that are much more holistic and look at it as a public health issue and not just a justice one. We have to be willing to work long term to reduce violence, not just respond to it. It is a balancing act to get the two of those elements correct. In the past few weeks, I have read a number of books by Édouard Louis, a French writer. He discusses violence though novels. A line I found in one of his books - I believe it was History of Violence - was about how, when violence was part of someone's daily rhythm, he or she ended up believing it was normal.”
“Services, interventions, the education system and so on often did not intervene or were not aware at certain points of whether there was familial violence within the home, for example. People have been completely dehumanised and violence becomes a normalised behaviour. People also feel there is a reward system with violence. We need to be able to speak about that as well as the kind of relationship men have to violence in that regard. The problem is that, when men become more physically men in the world, we do not allow them the victimhood that came before the perpetration of the violence. In a sense, we separate them from their own histories, so we never get to truly and fully explore the shame, humiliation and events that happened to them in their lives and interrupt the violence.”
“I am discussing these initiatives because, while I understand the reaction to opt for sentences, more police and so on, that must be done in parallel with other initiatives that are about reducing violence overall, not just responding to violence or a particular instance of violence. It is about looking at violence prevention in the widest possible sense. I have worked with men who have committed violence. When I was doing theatre of the oppressed and so on in the prison, I brought the current Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, in to do a bit of work. When you map the histories of many of the men who are perpetrating serious violence, you find that they were victims of violence in the first instance.”
“It is any type of violence that can happen within a community. Even though the focused deterrence and group violence intervention models had a relationship at one time with the illicit drug trade, they are not specifically set up to be about that trade. They are about the violence intervention piece in and of itself and are used in all types of community violence where there is a dynamic of group violence. Often, people think that, under a particular model, we just engage with the individual committing violence, but it is sometimes about the pressures of the community, an estate or a group in the context of reputation, image control or what the group expects a person to do in a given situation to save face. All these group dynamics can add to and fuel violence.”
“In the models being tried out in Sweden, Scotland and other places, people try to build and develop relationships within those communities so that, between a policing model, a community model and a health model, there are interventions that happen within the moment. We will never stop violence that happens as a random act, but those countries have systems to interrupt when there is potential for retaliation. A violence intervention team will not enable us to catch everything before it happens, but we can look at all of the other dynamics involved, for example, who else is impacted by the violence and whether we can intervene at all of the different pressure points in order to ensure there is no retaliatory violence within communities. The umbrella term I find being used is "community violence", which is basically interpersonal violence.”
“Police in Scotland decided to move away from only seeing violence through the lens of justice to also seeing it through the public health lens. The World Health Organization has a definition of violence as a public health issue. Treating it as such opens it up for us to deal with it in a much more holistic way. Part of the World Health Organization's definition is that violence is preventable rather than inevitable. It treats violence using a population disease model. Regarding the men who are engaged in violence, there is a very small percentage of people who cause the most harm in a community when it comes to violence-related issues. However, no one is working with that group in a targeted way. It is only ever a police response, so we do not actually get to interrupt the violence.”
“That is not just gang-related violence, although some of the models operated by the people I met were specifically developed during a time of heightened gang violence in the likes of LA. There is a guy called Aqeela Sherrills who negotiated the peace deal between the Crips and the Bloods in 1992. He was an ex-LA gang member but is now seen as a credible messenger and voice. He was someone who has the relatability and credibility within a particular world who went on to build a community-based public safety model that Scotland later relied on as well. It brought Aqeela Sherrills, David Kennedy and others over from the United States. That was at the request of the police in Scotland. I have had some communication with Karyn McCluskey, who oversees the Scottish violence reduction unit.”
“The closer someone is to violence, the more likely that person is to experience violence or to experience the cycles and the revictimisation within that. There are some models in the United States. There is an amazing one in the health sector. When somebody arrived at a hospital having clearly experienced a violence-related injury, there used to be a “treat and street” model where the person was treated and then allowed leave the hospital. What has now been introduced there is a wider community-based public safety model that involves partnerships with law enforcement and the other arms of justice, social services and the health sector, including doctors. There are trained community violence interventionists to work within the health system and communities in a partnership model to interrupt violence when it is happening.”
“We often react to situations of violence within the community by automatically looking to the police and saying we need more policing or more visibility of police, but even where present, the visibility of police has not reduced crime overall. The guillotine did not reduce crime overall. The public display of punishment and sentences have not decreased crime. The police’s ability to respond to and investigate crime is a necessary and important one but we cannot rely on the police to police us out of poverty and the core drivers of violence. All of the evidence shows that the core drivers of violence are humiliation, shame, not being able to meet one’s economic needs and one’s proximity to violence. Violence, in and of itself, breeds violence.”
“To speak specifically to the violence intervention piece, there is an initiative in the United States founded by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I met a guy over there who I have been working with closely to build a strategy. He is an academic and was the founder of the Boston ceasefire project. The evidence behind that project has shown that youth homicides have massively reduced through focused deterrence and group violence intervention initiatives. That does not happen instead of law enforcement but works in parallel with it. The approach is about looking at the group dynamics of violence and a model that intervenes in the moment to address violence in communities. It is a relationship-based model that requires a lot of trust, infrastructure and work but it is something we need to do.”
“This is an important topic to discuss. Over the past year or two, I have been lucky enough to visit some violence intervention programmes in Newark in the United States. There are some amazing initiatives elsewhere. We do not need to recreate the wheel when we consider violence intervention, specifically. Ireland can look to Scotland and some of the initiatives in the United States and Sweden around violence intervention. There is also the whole realm of community safety, which also includes the perception of safety. Some things are not measurable. We cannot always address people's perceptions of whether they are safe or not in a real and tangible way. There are many things we can do in that regard.”
“It is not just about fairness and justice, but also a reflection on how and when we work together. Unless we work together from the top through all of the positions and from the bottom back up again, then we will never be working together, given that the power will always remain concentrated and orchestrated in a particular direction. I challenge people to think about how, when we say we want to work in collaboration, it means at all levels of decision making and how we do things. Whether that is in secret or out loud, we should be willing to share power when the opportunity is there.”
“I thank the Cathaoirleach. I will be brief. I wish the two candidates well. My comments are not personal to anyone at all. They are more a reflection of what my colleague from Sinn Féin said about the first test of fairness and justice. It is also the first test of working collaboratively because working collaboratively does not only happen with the scraps at the bottom. It also happens in how we discuss who has the power in a room. Working collaboratively means that, when discussions are had about positions like Chairmanships and Leas-Chathaoirleach and about those who get to make decisions at the top, it is meant to be done in collaboration. We cannot only say that we want to work together when all of the decisions around power have already been made.”
“Often, when we report from communities when overdoses happen, it can take a while, due to the coroner's process and other matters, for the HSE to respond appropriately when a bad batch makes its way into communities. I want to put front and centre the estimated 234 lives lost because they occurred in only a couple of months. I ask that we work together to ensure the committee is re-established as soon as possible.”
“To put in context the urgency of making sure we follow through on the commitments made regarding the Joint Committee on Drugs Use, it is estimated that since the committee last met, on 24 October 2024, 234 people have died from overdoses. Since just before Christmas, at election time, another 234 deaths have been estimated due to overdose. We will find a number of reasons for that, one of which is access to Naloxone. This drug is still not available over the counter. It can be given through a nasal spray and is very simple to use. The issue does not need to be complicated. The other reason is how quickly we can respond to contaminated drug use in the market.”
“I ask that we make representations to the Taoiseach and other Government members on the commitment in the programme for Government to re-establish the Joint Committee on Drugs Use. The committee did a huge body of work before it dissolved due to an election. We produced an interim report before we finished on 24 October 2024. All parties and none fully agreed to all the recommendations in the report. The point from which we are starting is a strong one and we should get that special committee going again. It has a timeline and an end. We can meet for another three months, as was meant to happen in the previous term following the citizens' assembly.”
“I recognise my election in those years as breaking some of the moulds and statistics I never thought I would break. I want to say RIP to the Trinity College constituency and to acknowledge that it put some very unusual voices of their times into the Seanad, whether that was David Norris or Mary Robinson. There are many people who came through that constituency who made massive change. I thank the constituency, which, thankfully, is made up of people from all counties and from around the world. I acknowledge that, although those university constituencies have been changed, they have served a very important period in history in terms of the work I have done and the work others who preceded me have done. I welcome everyone to the Chamber and I look forward to the next five years.”
“I am not feeling it and I am not liking it too much. When I was first elected in 2016, I was completely blindsided. I did not even know what I was going to be doing as a Senator. I ran for the Seanad and wondered what it was. I can imagine there are people coming in and wondering what to do and how to do it. There are many people in this room who can share that knowledge and wisdom on how to do the job in an everyday sense. In 2016 when I looked at the statistics on being elected, Mary Robinson was the only other person to ever get in on her first run. David Norris was the last person before me to ever unseat an incumbent. When I ran, I had no sense in the world that I was ever going to be able to infiltrate that space. I acknowledge Trinity College because this is now the last Trinity constituency.”
“Solidarity is taking values and extending them. Those who come last come first. If your politics do not reach those who come last, they are not about solidarity and social cohesion. When we think of the people in the LGBTQ community, I hope the likes of Senator Mullen includes them in the picture and discussion on solidarity and social cohesion and when we talk about all lives having dignity. The work in this Chamber should bring people together. It should never, ever divide. When we use language, we should be very sure we understand what that language means in effect in the world. This Chamber is a very important place to tease out not only those concepts and values, but to actually turn them into real-world effects. I congratulate everyone on their election. I did not think I was old enough to be one of the veterans in the room.”
“We must be able to work together and then look out into the world and see that working together actually produced something real in people's lives and made change, rather than just saying we will work together to make change. We must find ways to measure the impact of working together rather than it just being a thing in and of itself that we like to say we do in the Chamber. I say this to challenge ourselves to be able to work with one another and do the work. I am not saying that to divide us in any way. I am saying it so that we actually turn the words we say in this Chamber into actions in society. When we talk and think about solidarity, we must think about it in its truest form. Senator Mullen referred to everybody having dignity and the issues of social cohesion and solidarity. Solidarity never divides.”
“I know people are just being friendly but we should start as we mean to go on. We should be able to work together and I have always done so. I have passed legislation and amendments in this House through working with people from all parties and none, but we must not value that above all else. We must also value the actions people take within the roles we have. We can be polite to each other and work together but it is not only words that matter. It is not only the things we say which we can agree on, pat each other on the back and say, "That was a job well done, we all worked together and got on", but it has no material effect in the world.”
“I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on his election. In his first term he worked to open up the Seanad, which is something I really respected, by bringing voices in. People voted for a reform of the Seanad, and while we wait on that, we ourselves must reform how we engage in the Seanad and do our roles even if it is in the restricted manner it is. While I fully respect people finding ways to relate to each other about the counties they are from, I cannot but help think that we should judge each other and relate to each other based on the values we hold. When I think of the Palestinian people, the people in Sudan, the two people who die each day from overdose, the approximately 70% of people in prison who have not completed any form of State exams, I do not think the counties we are from will ever actually matter to their lives.”