“WHAT FINE GAEL did during the election was scurrilous and cheap,” Labour Party housing spokesperson and Limerick TD Conor Sheehan told The Journal ahead of his party’s conference today. 

Speaking about how drug policy became a talking point this time last year during the general election, Sheehan accused Fine Gael of misrepresenting what decriminalisation means. 

At the time, the then Taoiseach Simon Harris took aim at Fianna Fáil’s manifesto pledge to decriminalise the possession of drugs for personal use.

Fianna Fáil’s manifesto stated the party would “continue to develop our health-led response to drug addiction” and “decriminalise drug possession for personal use”, without naming specific substances. When questions were raised about the party’s position, Fianna Fáil narrowed the scope of its ambition to cannabis and ruled out substances like heroin and cocaine.

However, Harris weighed in on the matter, stating: “Do we really want to move to a point, does Irish society want to move to a point, where we’re decriminalising drug taking? Not sure, and I certainly don’t.”

Harris’s position contrasted with that of a cross-party Oireachtas committee on drug use  that recommended decriminalising the personal use of all illicit drugs. 

Representing Limerick City, Sheehan said that one of the biggest issues facing the area is drugs. 

“We have a drugs crisis. It’s manifesting itself with crack cocaine. There’s a huge problem down here with an oversupply of cheap crack cocaine. It’s causing problems in terms of homelessness, and it’s also causing a lot of social problems in around the city centre,” he said.

“I think what Fine Gael did during the election was scurrilous and cheap. I think they tried to misrepresent what decrim (decriminalisation) actually means. Like decrim does not mean let’s have a free for all.

“What it means is, if somebody is caught with a possession with an amount of drugs for personal use, and we can argue the toss over what that limit should be, what we need to do to that person is get that person engaged with addiction services and not have them up before the district, and then eventually, if they have a cumulative number of offenses, they end up before the circuit,” said Sheehan.

He went on to say, “in fairness to Fianna Fáil, certain people in Fianna Fáil, like Paul McAuliffe, were really good and really progressive on this”.

‘Simon Harris is actually quite populist’

“I think Simon Harris is actually quite populist. I think he’s very reactionary. I think Fine Gael like to lecture people about populism. They like to lecture us in the Labour Party about populism.

“But like, you look at what Simon Harris said during the election about drugs, that’s populism, because it’s not evidence-based,” he said.

Sheehan said, in his view, Harris is trying to position Fine Gael “to the right of everyone else, as being, you know, ‘we’re tougher on law and order. We’ll come down harder on this’”.

“It’s like what he said on on immigration a couple of weeks ago, that, to me, was just populism. Like it was just Simon Harris saying something A to distract and B to divide,” he said.

Earlier this month, Harris said that the general migration figures, outside of asylum applications, were “too high”.

When migration is discussed people “on the left try to shut down that debate”, Harris also said. 

Housing plan

At 32 years of age, the Limerick City TD is one of the youngest representatives in the Dáil. Housing is one of the key concerns facing his generation and the TD is unhappy with the government’s response to the housing crisis. 

Micheal Martin, Simon Harris and James Browne launching the government's new housing plan this week. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Speaking about the government’s new housing plan launched this week, he highlights the lack of emphasis on getting single adults out of homelessness in the government plan.

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Sheehan said he is also frustrated with the lack of focus on social and affordable housing, stating that the slight increase in targets from 10,000 to 12,000 social homes is not enough. 

At the Labour conference today, there will be a discussion on the party’s policy document which will be a blueprint for addressing housing issues.

Sheehan said the government need to move fast to introduce a bill to provide legislative certainty for major infrastructure projects and also proposed a strong “common good” clause in the Planning and Development Act to prevent hostile objectors. 

His party will also introduce a Private Member’s Bill on vacancy and dereliction in December, he added, stating that more urgency in tackling the issue is needed. 

Sheehan said the Labour Party would also like the Land Development Agency (LDA) to  get the necessary powers to allow it to compel state agencies to transfer land to it.

Speaking about the controversy surrounding the vacant Baggot Street Hospital in Dublin, which was put up for sale by the HSE before it officially informed the LDA, Sheehan said: 

“The LDA never made an approach in relation to that. The HSE should have been compelled to transfer that to the LDA. They should have been compelled to transfer that to them and to allow the LDA then to either, look at the site and see what can we do with this, and if you have a situation, then, if there’s infrastructure works that need to be done, then for the LDA to identify that, set that train in process and get a developer in rather than flogging it,” he said. 

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