Justice | To ask the Minister for Justice the number of arrests and prosecutions for drug dealing in the past two years

To ask the Minister for Justice the number of arrests and prosecutions for drug dealing in the past two years; and if she will make a statement on the matter.

REPLY

As the Deputy will be aware, the Garda Commissioner is responsible by law for the management and administration of An Garda Síochána, including operational matters such as arrests for the sale and supply of drugs. As Minister, I have no role in the matter. 

I am advised by the Garda authorities that the table below outlines the count of Charges/Summons by Proceedings Created Year, and Prisoner Logs by Arrest or Entry Year.

Year	2020	2021	2022*
Prisoner Logs	5262	4957	1552
Charges/Summons	6711	6467	2322

*Up to 23/05/2022

I am informed that a search of the PULSE database was conducted on 23 May 2022 for Charges/Summons and Prisoner Logs associated with incidents of the type “Possession of Drugs for Sale or Supply” which were reported during the period 01/01/2020 – 23/05/2022. I am advised that the dataset of prisoner logs was then filtered to only include those with the arrest reason ‘Drugs’. The Charges/Summons dataset was filtered to only include those ‘Contrary to Section 15 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977’.

The Deputy will appreciate that prosecutions are a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions, who is independent in the performance of her functions. As Minister, I have no role in prosecutions.

The Courts Service have provided the below table, which outlines the number of offences and number of persons before the District Court for the ‘sale and supply of drugs’. 

I am advised that the Courts Service can only provide data in relation to where offence codes provided on the system were used by prosecutors. Prosecutors may have used uncoded free text offences and any such offences would not be included in the below table.

Year	No. of offences before the District Court	No. of persons before the District Court
Jan-Dec 2020	3,689	2,290
Jan-Dec 2021	5,478	3,377
Jan-Mar 2022	1,359	903
Total	10,526	6,570