Gary Gannon: "You don’t get to stand in the Dáil, beat your chest and play the tough guy, whilst not realising we have a crisis in multiple forms here"

In a historic move that could impact hundreds of thousands of Irish lives, the recently published  Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use Final Report calls for “the repeal of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 in order to fully decriminalise the possession of drugs for personal use.”

If that isn’t eye-catching enough, the cross-party report also “supports legislative reforms to strengthen and extend the spent convictions regime, to reduce the long-term impacts of criminal records on rehabilitation, recovery, social inclusion and access to employment.”

Which is pretty much everything Hot Press has been calling for since it started campaigning for sensible drug policy in the 1970s.

The Joint Committee was chaired by Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon, who in his foreword notes: “This report has its origin in the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use, which set out thirty-six recommendations in January 2024. The Assembly’s work was the most comprehensive examination of drug use ever undertaken in the history of the State.

“Over many months, a representative cross-section of the public heard the evidence, considered the arguments, and concluded that drug use in Ireland should be approached primarily as a public health issue.

“The Committee has concluded,” he continues, “that the personal possession of drugs for one’s own use should cease to be treated as a criminal matter and should instead be met with a health-led approach. This is not a marginal adjustment. It is a recognition that criminalising people for their own drug use has not reduced harm, and that a different approach is both possible and overdue.”

In addition to Gannon, those signing off on the potentially game-changing report include Fine Gael TDs Colm Burke and John Paul O’Shea and FG senator Evanne Ní Chuilinn; Fianna Fáil deputies Tom Brabazon, Willie O’Dea and James O’Connor and FF senators Mary Fitzpatrick and Teresa Costello; Sinn Féin TDs Máire Devine and Ann Graves and SF senator Nicole Ryan; Labour TD Marie Sherlock; and Independent senator Lynn Ruane.

Gary Gannon with Fianna Fáil senator Mary Fitzpatrick

Responding the following day to the publication of the report, Taoiseach Micheál Martin was cautious but not dismissive.

“We will examine it, both the Department of Health and the Department of Justice, because there’s about 160 recommendations, and the mental health dimension of it as well,” he said in response to a Dáil question from Gary Gannon’s Social Democrats boss, Holly Cairns. “We’re going to give it very serious consideration.”

That the Joint Committee was unanimous in its findings – no mean feat when you’ve five different parties and an independent sat round the table – is in no small part down to Gannon’s deft stewardship and long-held interest in drug policy reform.

A member of the SocDems since its formation in 2015, the former independent councillor quickly established himself as one of the new party’s brightest young talents and five years later became a TD for Dublin Central, the area where Gannon was born and grew up.

The Social Democrats Spokesperson for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration he’s become a regular on TV and radio news shows and, because of his unflinching support of minorities, a right-wing hate figure.

With the Social Democrats on 12% in the latest Business Post/Red C opinion poll – that’s just two percentage points shy of Fianna Fáil – and the Joint Committee on Drugs Use Final Report causing serious political reverberations, it’s the perfect time to subject the 39-year-old a Hot Press grilling…

Stuart Clark: Congratulations on the Joint Committee Report which is a victory for both common sense and compassion. Did you expect to reach that consensus on the decriminalisation of drugs for personal use?

Gary Gannon: Yes, kind of… I know full well that when people sit down and look at how we confront drugs and drug addiction, the evidence is almost irrefutable at this point. But what happens too often is that politics gets involved. My committee was following-on from a previous Oireachtas one which made mainly the same recommendations in relation to decriminalisation, but that happened just before an election. Once the election happened, the same parties – though not necessarily the same people – who were in the room all of a sudden started fighting with each other. So, when we started out on this well over a year ago, I wanted all the TDs and senators to understand the enormity of the issue whilst being able to remove politics from it. And that’s what this committee was so good at. Regardless of how we usually disagree and fight, there was none of that around the table. We all genuinely cared about the issue. That’s the first time I’ve ever really experienced politics being left out of the room.

Were you disappointed with the Tánaiste, Simon Harris, responding to the report by saying: “Snorting coke, popping pills and smoking joints has real-life consequences that we cannot forget. We are not planning to decriminalise the use of drugs that inflict misery, criminality and suffering on our communities.” Coming within twenty-four hours of the report being published, you wonder whether he read it.

I don’t think for a second he read it. This is where politics gets very disillusioning. Somebody else from Fine Gael asked him a question in the Dáil chamber and his reaction descended into a morality position that’s not based on evidence; that’s not based on the lived experience of people who came before the committee. It’s also not trusting of his own colleagues in Fine Gael who were on the committee. It’s politics of the lowest form – and of cowardice. There’s a classist element to it and I think the Tánaiste let himself down. He didn’t demonstrate trust in his own people, which is a bad position for a leader to be in.

Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use

Is it fair to say that drugs and decriminalisation would not be seen as a vote winner?

Drugs and decriminalisation is not a vote winner, but nor is anything difficult, really. Courage is a commodity that doesn’t exist as much as it should in politics. Too often, decriminalisation gets confused with legalisation. Or people will base it on what they see walking down Capel Street or any street where you see the more unsightly aspects of drug addiction. You say “decriminalisation” but they hear “legalisation” and say you’re soft on drugs, you’re soft on crime. The recommendations we made last week were by no means innovative. In 2022, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice also recommended decriminalisation. The chair of that, James Lawless, and the deputy-chair, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, are now respectively the Minister for Higher Education and the Minister for Health.

Could it be that Simon Harris was indulging in some macho posturing, and might when it comes down to it relent?

I’m a politician who seeks collaboration, but in the absence of it I’ll go for the fight. Simon Harris should talk to his committee members who played a really important role. He should also talk to his own Health Minister. Fine Gael present themselves as a party of law and order, but I live in Dublin city-centre where this is a public health crisis and know that the system we have at the moment isn’t working. You don’t get to stand in the Dáil, beat your chest and play the tough guy whilst not realising we have a crisis in multiple forms here. There is no law and order when it comes to drugs. We have drug gangs who are coercing children into criminality. We have drug-related intimidation which has increased substantially. You’re not going to put a stop to that by punishing a person who’s using drugs as a form of self-medication for trauma you and I have never experienced.

Micheál Martin didn’t say “yes” – but he hasn’t said “no.” Do you think he’s more amenable than his coalition partner is?

I do think that Micheál Martin is more amenable to what we’re proposing. Mary Fitzpatrick was the deputy-chair of my committee. She’s a Fianna Fáil senator, she’s been a politician for a long time and represented the constituency of Cabra. She made a presentation to the parliamentary party the night before the report was published. He heard the presentation and trusted his people. He didn’t make a bombastic statement in the Dáil. Fianna Fáil had decriminalisation as one of their policies heading into an election, and then when some pearl-clutching Fine Gael-er went on radio and said “This is shocking!”, they reverted and said, “No, no, it’s just for cannabis!” Come on lads, courage of your convictions!

Talking of convictions, what do the Gardaí make of all of this?

We had two senior Gardaí address the committee. One of them was an Assistant Commissioner who was absolutely against the removal of Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The words he said were, “Take it from me, if we remove Section 3 the number of drug dealers across the city is going to increase.” I said, “Okay, but you also have Section 15 which deals with the sale and supply. Why do you need Section 3 to go at the people who are exploiting other people’s suffering?” They weren’t really able to answer that question.

Talking to a senior Garda recently, he admitted that they don’t want Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act to be repealed because they feel it’d strip them of some of their stop and search powers.

That’s what this is about. In Dublin, they have some sort of antiquated law which gives them stop and search powers. Outside of Dublin, Section 3 is always used as a means by which you can say you suspect someone of a crime of possession, and then try and establish other crimes that you also believe they’ve done. That’s a poor form of policing. Section 3 when it’s applied to drugs is just a class power. It’s never used to go into a more privileged setting like a rugby club. Of the 7,400 charges that were enacted last year under Section 3, very few of them happened in the places where we know recreational drug use to be prevalent. I don’t want Gardaí to use Section 3 to go into rugby or golf clubs. It’s the hypocrisy that bothers me.

When did you first become aware that such a thing as ‘problematic drug use’ existed?

It took me longer to become aware of a world where problematic drug use didn’t exist. I was born in Mountain View Court flats down there in Summerhill. Lived there till I was about seven and then moved across the road to Sean O’Casey Avenue. I’ve only ever known a world in which drug addiction was prevalent. I remember a teacher there dying of drug-related causes when I was very young. We’d have seen people being taken out of flats in body bags. I was on those Concerned Parents Against Drugs marches as a kid with my Mam and Dad. I was in big rooms where you’d be deciding which dealer was getting put out and which one wasn’t.

Was that when you first came across Tony Gregory, the independent Dublin Central TD who ruffled many an establishment feather during his twenty-seven years in Dáil Eireann?

Yeah, my parents canvased for him. He was courageous and stood up in the Daíl and called out the drug barons. Tony Gregory obviously had a big profile, but there were other people around him like Fergus McCabe, Mick Rafferty and Sadie Grace, who were organising within the community, entirely related to drugs. My Dad used to sleep in one of those huts ready to confront the dealers. I’ve always said: if there’s a book in me, I’d like to write about that period of history.

Photo: Saoirse Mc Allorun

The recent Prime Time special on drug-related intimidation was shocking but probably didn’t contain anything you weren’t already aware of.

In our office, we’re constantly dealing with drug-related intimidation in all its different forms. Prime Time highlighted children being forced into crime because they owe debt or their parents owe debt. “You owe us €200, take this bag of drugs down there” – and suddenly you’re in the gang. This is happening all over the country and no one seems to be taking it seriously.

Have you taken illegal drugs yourself?

I talked about this at the start of the drugs committee because I just felt I had to. I did, of course. I spoke to the Independent about taking drugs after finishing football and going to Trinity. I remember dad laughing and saying, “Ha, ha, ha, you grew up in the inner city but didn’t start taking drugs until you went to Trinity!”

Which substances?

I took coke, I took tablets. I had the experience most people do; you just age out of them. I’m very conscious, though, of my responsibility and don’t want it to look like I’m normalising it because I had a relatively good experience. Lots of politicians have talked about it; I don’t want to do it in a way that’s “I didn’t inhale”, but I also want people to know I was very lucky. Not with the drugs but lucky with the flats, lucky with the trauma. I haven’t ended up in criminality or in prison or in the throes of addiction like some people from my class. When I say “class”, I mean my class in school. People take drugs recreationally – but where I grew up people took them for trauma.

So, was yours a safe, stable family environment?

Two parents brings stability that a lot of others didn’t have. We very much knew poverty. My Mam was a street trader on Henry Street. She still sells colours at matches. My Dad was quite strict in a lot of ways. We played sport and were protected a little bit from some of the things that happened outside. It was a hard old place the inner city, but it was absolutely full of lovely community.

Football is a big thing in the Gannon family, isn’t it?

Brian, my older brother, played for Shelbourne. I’ve two younger twin brothers, Alan and Paul, who’ve also played at a high level. I’m the only one of the brothers who hasn’t represented Ireland at under-age level. That’s because I wore boxing gloves on me feet! But, no, I played for Sheriff YC who won lots of different things. All of those lads grew up in the inner city and not a single one of them was ever involved in anything (bad). You’ve great people from down there like Troy Parrott.  He played for Belvedere which is the posh club!

How would you rate the FAI’s handling of the upcoming Ireland vs. Israel fixtures, which are now being held in Serbia.

Pathetic, genuinely pathetic. I understand the FAI will say they’ve a job to do and that we might get fined and lose points. So what? Some things matter more. There’s no way Israel’s flag should be flying beside ours and their national anthem playing when they’re committing genocide. I think the FAI have been cowardly beyond words.

Should the government have got involved?

I kind of appreciate why government hasn’t stepped in, because you don’t want to dictate to sporting bodies – but they did step in when it came to Russia. When he was Minister for Sport, Jack Chambers sent an email to all the sporting organisations encouraging them not to play against Russia. Again, one of the things I can’t stand in politics is hypocrisy. Palestinian footballers are being targeted and killed precisely because they’re cultural icons.

If the Social Democrats were in power, what would you be doing to sanction Israel over Gaza and Lebanon?

I wouldn’t have any trade or cultural engagement with them. The EU Horizon Funding of Israeli universities needs to go.  We’d be upholding our obligations under the Genocide Act 1973, which is that we should have no hand or part in the state of Israel while it is carrying out a genocide against the state of Gaza. The war didn’t start on October 7. As horrific as that event was, it’s been on-going for generations and each time it just keeps getting worse. It’s been compounded to the point where violence we never thought imaginable has somehow been normalised.

What’s your response to J.D. Vance’s blatant interference in European politics – and the White House’s comments about ‘civilisational erasure’?

(laughs) ‘Civilisational erasure’ because I didn’t have a girlfriend in high school! J.D. Vance is funded by these tech bros, who see him as the pathway to getting a sort of tech bros oligarchy. There’s never a belief system with these guys, it’s selfishness that’s driving them. The easiest way to generate poison is to tell vulnerable people that there’s another group over there who are responsible for your problems. Again, the playbook is to manipulate and spread hate.

Thankfully, we haven’t hadn’t a Jo Cox-style political murder here yet, but do you feel that public discourse in Ireland has become more aggressive?

Yes, it’s horrific. I don’t think we’re too far away from a situation like Jo Cox here. It’s rare I walk down the street and somebody won’t call me names. People should be able to criticise you for decisions you’ve made, but calling someone a traitor because they happen to disagree with you? You see a few independent councillors around this city trying to build themselves up by convincing you that the hardship in your life is because of migrants. These arseholes are manipulating social media algorithms to tell people that the only way to be a man is to defend your women from this ‘invasion’. It’s pathetic but needs to be tackled.

The first day or two of the fuel protests on O’Connell Street were almost carnival-like. Then outside forces got involved and it became a lot darker. How organised do you think the far-right in Ireland are – and where’s the money coming from?

The far-right are relatively organised at this point and they’re getting better at it. We’ve been lucky in Ireland because the leaders of these movements are generally uncharismatic. Fellas that if they sat beside you in the pub, you’d move. All they have is hatred but they’re well able to capitalise on events. The money’s coming from conservative elements in the US. You saw with Trump’s Project 25 how organised they are. The Steve Bannons of this world think Ireland is this place of green fields and white faces. They’re pumping money into here.

As soon as something bad happens in a community, you get plausible – but normally false – claims being made on social media. Do you think there are paid agitators waiting to enflame situations?

Absolutely. From the moment you hear that something’s happened, you’re thinking, “How are they going to mobilise hatred around this?” An example would be what happened in the shopping centre down in Carlow. Before any information had got out, you had individuals driving down there with their cameras saying there’d been an attack by a migrant person – which subsequently turned out not to be the case. But you saw how fast they got down there to try and capitalise on what they thought would be an opportunity to spread hatred.

The Dublin riots in 2023

What goes through your head when you see a fresh row of tricolours being put up on as residential street?

That the people putting them up don’t know their history. They’re hoping they’ll be taken down so they can go, “Look, they want you to be ashamed of the flag.” It’s another tactic to mobilise violence. I’m a “you can’t eat the flag” kind of a guy, but it’s frustrating that we’ve allowed it to get to this point. It’s being used as a tactic of division and that was never what the flag was intended for.

You quit Twitter over the dangers Grok posed to children. How would a Social Democrats government clip the tech bros’ wings?

Turn off the algorithm. We are a central point for tech companies, we are an EU regulator and have powers at our disposal under GDPR. Why does a tech company have access to your preferences? Turn the recommended algorithms off straight away

What are your thoughts on the death in May of Yves Sakila?

We’ve all seen that video; it’s horrific. There’s no justification… nobody needs to be held like that tightly over an item in their possession.

Did you allow yourself a celebratory shandy when the Red C poll showing the Social Democrats on 12% was published?

I was in the Social Democrats when we were on 1% and 2% so it’s nice to see us in double digits! I think we’re doing something different to what’s been done before. We’re actually telling people the truth. We have a belief system that’s tried and tested. It’s how Europe was rebuilt after World War II, which was through social democracy. I want to tax you, Stuart, but I want to use that tax to pay for public services. I’m not going to denigrate a trans person or a migrant person because I don’t believe they’re doing any harm.

Are there on-going discussions between Social Democrats and other parties of the left about shared positions in the run up to the next General Election?

Firstly, no, not at the moment. Can there be a left-wing government? Yeah, absolutely. But going into the election we’d need to establish beforehand what the taxation base is going to be in order to fund public services, pay for pensions and afford adequate standards of living without lying to people. It was in 2007 when we had Bertienomics – lower taxes, invest in public services – that the arse fell out of everything. When we go to the electorate, I want to be able to say, “Here’s the things you’ll like, here’s the things you may not like…”

Do you consider Sinn Féin to be a party of the left?

Yes, I do.

Should religion be taken out of school hours and treated as an optional extra?

Yes, completely. I believe in parental choice – if you want to send your son or daughter to a religious school, fine, but it shouldn’t be the norm that 91% of schools in this country are under religious patronage. The state should be the ones overseeing the means by which our children are receiving their education. I have great respect for religion – I’ve started going back in the last couple of years myself – but it’s “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Get yourself out of there – and our hospitals while you’re at it!

So, you’re not in favour of the government allowing St. Vincent’s to own the new National Maternity Hospital.

I know the church wants to keep control of these entities and see themselves in decline at the moment, but it’s bonkers that they’re being enabled by the state who are paying for it. Especially when there are so many religious groups who still haven’t paid redress to people they’ve exploited physically and sexually. The church should have no role in our health facilities

Would you be in favour of seizing church assets if they refuse to cough up?

Absolutely. These religious orders have been complicit in the forced servitude of women and men who are still very much alive today to tell their story. They, in the cruellest manner,  exploited and victimised children in their care. Why wouldn’t the state be holding them to account for reparations? Frankly, some of them should have been locked up.

If the Social Democrats were to be involved in coalition negotiations, what would the red lines be?

We went into the last election having what we called our ‘Five Dealbreakers’, which were in relation to housing, healthcare, childcare, climate and disabilities. We picked five issues and said, “If we can’t deliver on those, we’ll walk away.” We’re going to do that again next time.

Gary Gannon and Daniel Ennis

What is the Social Democrats plan to eliminate homelessness?

On day one, we’d initiate a state construction company. It’s not a unicorn idea in that I grew up in a flat and then a house built by the state. We need to designate land as affordable and have the state or AHBs (Approved Housing Body) do the building to take profit away from it. I’m conscious we’re speaking on Capel Street where the levels of vacancy are massive. You need to open all of that up, so you can get people living in the centre of the city again. Tax the bejaysus out of anybody sitting on landbanks, which I see as a form of antisocial behaviour. We’ve also proposed a ban on the build for rental only market. There’s always going to be the need for some private investment in building, but that should be at the lower end of what we’re doing. Housing should be built as a public right and a public amenity.

Do you look at the Mayor of New York’s three-year rent freeze and think, “We should be more radical!”

A three-year rent freeze is something we’d also enact straight away. He’s shown courage but I don’t think anything Zohran Mamdani has done is particularly radical. In terms of childcare, Social Democrats have been beating that drum for years and, as I say, it was one of our dealbreakers. Why wouldn’t you tax people who can afford it a little bit more in order to invest in public services? In America, Mamdani is seen as this radical, but in Ireland he’d probably be on the same wing as the Social Democrats.

What was your response to Jeffrey Donaldson’s conviction?

Absolute horror. It’s disgusting. The people who came forward and told their story shouldn’t have had to be as courageous as they were. These powerful men cloak themselves in religious garb and act like they know god better than anyone else. They use their power as a shield. I hope the man rots in there.

Finally, what would success look like at the next election for the Social Democrats?

Being in a position where we’re very influential in government. I think we’re on that trajectory. More important to me, is how we govern. If people wake up in the morning and no longer have to worry about the cost of childcare, that’ll be success. If they no longer have to worry about having a roof over their head, that’ll be success. We’ve reached the point now that, with the right candidate, we can be competitive in any constituency. So, it’s all to play for.