Ireland’s Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use has recommended the full decriminalisation of personal possession of all drugs, calling on the government to repeal Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977.
More than two years after it was established, with the sole task of evaluating the recommendations of the landmark Citizens’ Assembly on Drug Use ‘as quickly as possible’, the Oireachtas committee has now published the most comprehensive parliamentary statement yet on drug reform in Ireland.
The committee’s 161 recommendations, drawn from 13 months of testimony from domestic and international witnesses, represent the most comprehensive parliamentary examination of drug policy in the state’s history.
Yet, despite the multi-year process, public backing and 134-page report, the government has already signalled that it has no intention of implementing decriminalisation.
Its near immediate rejection by the ruling coalition, the largest party of which included a commitment to ‘decriminalise drug possession for personal use’ in its election manifesto in 2024, will come as a major but likely anticipated blow to advocates.
What the report recommends
The ‘Final Report’ from the Joint Committee on Drugs Use is broad in scope, covering everything from family, community support and intergenerational trauma alongside its core legal and policy reform recommendations.
Its headline recommendation, Recommendation 126, calls for the repeal of Section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977, which covers charges for personal possession. In its place, the committee recommends a system in which anyone found in possession of drugs for personal use is ‘offered all supports and health resources that are required’, with no criminal sanction attached.
The report defines decriminalisation as the removal of criminal status ‘in law and in practice’, explicitly ruling out the government’s current diversion model, which still makes possession a criminal offence and leaves health service referral at the discretion of the Garda.
On cannabis specifically, the committee was just one vote short of recommending full regulation and legalisation of cannabis. However, by the narrowest of margins, Recommendation 125 ultimately calls for a ‘health-led’ response and a ‘continued discussion and debate on the Government’s policy response to the possession of cannabinoids.’
The committee also recommended expanding the Medical Cannabis Access Programme (MCAP). As Business of Cannabis reported in April 2026, the programme has enrolled just 74 patients since its first patient in 2021, a figure that has drawn sustained criticism from patient advocates and clinicians alike.
The committee supported its proposals with detailed financial calculations throughout the report. For example, they calculate that keeping one person in custody costs approximately €100,000 per year, roughly twice the annual cost of residential addiction treatment. Ireland spent €338 million on drug-related services in 2024, yet just 1% of the total health budget reaches addiction services.
The report is the latest in a series of formal processes, each one generating evidence, recommendations, and, to date, limited government action.
The Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use, established in 2022, published its recommendations in 2024, calling for a health-led rather than criminal justice response to personal possession.
The committee process began in May 2024, when the 33rd Dáil established a Joint Committee on Drugs Use to examine the Citizens’ Assembly’s recommendations. It published an interim report with 59 recommendations in October 2024. Following the November 2024 general election, the incoming 34th Dáil reconstituted the committee in May 2025, extending its work before publishing the final 161-recommendation report last week.
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The government’s response
Within hours of the final report being published, the government had already made their position clear. Speaking in Westport, Co Mayo, on 26 June, Taoiseach Micheál Martin told the Irish Independent there was ‘probably an over-focus on just looking at the decriminalisation issue’, adding that the state had been ‘following the health-led approach predominantly over the last two decades.’
Minister of State for Drugs Jennifer Murnane O’Connor clarified: ‘No change is proposed to the Misuse of Drugs Act.’
According to reporting in The Irish Times, ‘senior coalition figures’ said on June 29 that decriminalisation will not be implemented in the lifetime of the current government.
‘We will not be doing this,’ one said. Tánaiste Simon Harris, who as Health Minister in 2019 announced government approval for a health-led approach to drug possession that remains unlegislated, is also understood to be strongly opposed to the proposed reforms.
In a Dáil contribution reported by the Irish Examiner, Harris warned that ‘middle Ireland’ was facilitating gangland crime by ‘snorting coke, popping pills, and smoking joints.’ Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan called for caution against policies that could ‘increase the incidence of drug taking’, invoking British Columbia’s decriminalisation experiment, which covered all drugs used in public, not cannabis specifically, as a cautionary reference.
This characterisation has already proved controversial, and drawn direct pushback from Committee chair Gary Gannon TD, who told the Irish Examiner that the cohort Harris described was not the one facing criminal sanction, adding that adding that both ministers had brought ‘genuinely both a classist element and a lack of understanding’ to the debate.
“The people popping pills, the people snorting coke, they’re not the ones getting criminal sanction,” he said.
“Decriminalisation will mostly benefit people who are the most vulnerable… The justice minister seemed to be conflating legalisation with decriminalisation.”
The government’s claim to an existing health-led approach is tested by the committee’s own primary source data. Figures from An Garda Síochána, submitted to the committee during its hearings, show Section 3 possession charges rising from 6,618 in 2021 to 8,287 in 2025.
What comes next
Despite the swift response from the governing coalition, the findings were welcomed by Labour, the Social Democrats, the Green Party, and Sinn Féin, all of whom called on the government to implement its recommendations.
Labour TD Marie Sherlock, herself a committee member, told The Irish Times: “The war on drugs has failed. It is time for the Government to admit that… Our report cannot become another document that sits on a shelf.”
Whether it does will depend on political will that is not currently in evidence. Writing in Hot Press, harm reduction expert Tony Duffin noted that this report is the latest in at least seven formal strategies, reviews and consultations on drug policy since 2017.
“The policy architecture is substantial,” he wrote. “The paperwork is not the issue. The issue is implementation.”
Writing on LinkedIn, Dr Michael Barron, Independent Chair of the Irish Coalition for Drug Reform, called the report ‘a careful piece of work, grounded in evidence and clear in its conclusions’, adding: “Ireland has produced thoughtful reports on drug policy before. The challenge has too often been turning recommendations into action.”
The government’s National Drugs Strategy is due in July 2026, but given both the timing and the response so far, the odds on ‘turning recommendations into action’ have rarely been longer.
