“Someone dies from a drug overdose in Ireland almost every day.” Holly Cairns, leader of the Social Democrats, put that to the Taoiseach during Leaders’ Questions on June 24, 2026, hours after an Oireachtas committee published its final report on drug use. Her next figure was no gentler: Irish drug deaths run at nearly three times the EU average.
Micheál Martin did not give her the answer she wanted.
What the committee proposed
The Joint Committee on Drugs Use wants section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 repealed. That is the provision that makes possession an offence. Drugs would stay illegal; people found carrying them for personal use would simply not face criminal penalties. The report runs to 161 recommendations, and it grew out of 36 recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use, set up in 2024 and chaired by Paul Reid, the former HSE chief executive.
Gary Gannon, the Social Democrats TD who chaired the committee, framed the change as “not a softening of the State’s resolve on drugs; it is a more honest and more effective use of it”. Criminalising users, he said, “has not reduced harm”.
Other proposals are less headline-friendly but just as concrete. Naloxone would be sold over the counter, and Heroin Assisted Treatment would be available nationwide. The report also asks for trauma and harm-reduction training for gardaí and local authorities.
The exchange in the Dáil
Martin told the chamber the State had already “moved to a health-led approach in terms of drug addiction”, and put a spending figure on it. According to RTÉ, he said the coalition had lifted Department of Health funding for drug-related programmes by €54 million, to €174 million, over the last seven to eight years. He dated the shift in policy to the last 25 years. Even so, he warned, such an approach “hasn’t guaranteed that consumption goes down”.
On the report itself he was cautious. “We’re going to give it a very serious consideration,” he said, adding that with 160 recommendations “we can’t implement them all.”
Cairns was unmoved. She said she “respectfully disagreed” that the coalition had gone health-led at all, and argued the Government had a chance to “save lives”.
Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan was more openly sceptical. Ireland, he said, should be “very careful” about changes that might push drug use up. He pointed to British Columbia, which reversed its own decriminalisation after three years, and to rising use in parts of the US after legalisation.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, the Labour MEP and former drugs minister, took the opposite view. “The war on drugs, which is effectively a war on people, has ended,” he said. Paul Reid called the moment a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” for people affected by addiction.
On July 2, an Irish Times editorial said the 161 recommendations deserve “proper Government consideration”. It added that since 2020 gardaí have been able to issue Adult Cautions rather than prosecute for small amounts of cannabis, so the gap between the law and daily practice is already narrow.
Sources
- Possession of all drugs for personal use should be decriminalised, committee recommends
- Remove criminal penalties for drug possession, TDs and senators from across spectrum say
- Is decriminalisation of drug possession on the way?
- Taoiseach says Govt has health-led approach to drug use (RTE News)
- The Irish Times view on drugs policy: a plan worth considering
