Debate contribution: Treatment and Recovery Centre in the North-west
Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on .
- MLA
- Mr Gerry Carroll
- Party at the time
- People Before Profit Alliance
- Date
- 4 March 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Opposition Business
- Heading
- Treatment and Recovery Centre in the North-west
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4833423
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I support the motion. We need a fully funded, purpose-built addiction treatment and recovery centre in the north-west. People in areas such as Strabane and Derry have some of the highest levels of poverty, deprivation, housing stress and inequality in these islands. It is worth saying that, despite repeatedly having political leaders come from those areas, there has been a litany of failure and refusal to deliver on the demands and needs of working-class communities, including the one that we are discussing today. I suggest that the failure is because of the type of politics that often dominates this place. Not only do we have stalemate, collapsed institutions and the like, but when Ministers are in place, we have a consensus around an economic model that works for the very people whom it was designed to benefit, the super wealthy, whilst everybody else is stuck with food banks, in-work poverty and so on and so forth. To tackle the regional disparities that exist in Derry and elsewhere, we need to challenge the economic narratives that have dominated for the past 50-plus years here. They are, "Live within your means", "Don't have Governments borrow too much", "Keep figures in the black" and so on and so forth. Such approaches are not only bereft of any alternative thinking at a crucial time, but they lead directly to the harm experienced by so many in our communities. I do not see how there is a chance — a snowball's chance, you may say — of the motion becoming a reality when we had an inadequate Programme for Government passed yesterday and we have a Budget process that is sped up to get things done quickly before anyone has a chance to really figure out what is going on and get answers to basic questions. That Budget also allows economic inequalities to continue unchecked. There absolutely needs to be a recovery centre in the north-west. To be honest, given the scale of addiction to alcohol and other substances, legal and illegal, in our communities, we need to see addiction treatment centres right across the North. People in my constituency need and would benefit from such support services, and it is a crime that there is such a lack of services currently. At this point, it is worth asking why people become addicts. Obviously, people have their own stories. It could happen to anybody. Issues around trauma have already been mentioned today. We do not often link poverty, economic inequality and alienation as key drivers of addiction for so many people. To escape the pain and difficulty of everyday life, many people self-medicate with legal and illegal substances. In the North, in 2023-24, almost 4,000 people were recorded on the substance misuse database as having presented to services for problem substance misuse. I suggest that it probably has gone up since then. We need, crucially, a health-based approach to this issue and not a criminal, policing or war-on-drugs approach, which is absolutely catastrophic and has failed. We should also challenge the absurdity, the waste of time and the ruining of people's lives that the current approach to the possession of cannabis, for one example, is causing. From 2019 to 2023, there were over 10,000 prosecutions for personal possession of cannabis. That is a shocking statistic, and I call on the Health Minister and the Justice Minister to challenge that approach and to speak out against it. We need to see a decriminalised approach to drugs. That approach works. The Portuguese model has, rightly, been recommended across the world to help and support people who are tackling addiction and struggling with addiction. I call on the Health Minister and Executive parties to back that approach.
619 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.07 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.93).
- No identity-based framing was identified (0.99).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.06 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.05 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.02 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.07 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.04 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.93 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.07 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 0.99 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.01 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.79 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.09 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.07 |
| Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits | 0.03 |
| Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations | 0.01 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:06 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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