A demand by Mr Emmet Stagg (Labour, Kildare North) that cannabis be legalised was rejected by the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach, Mr Chris Flood.

Mr Stagg asked Mr Flood if he was aware that recent surveys had indicated that 60 per cent of young people under 24 years used cannabis as their social drug of choice.

"Given that the use of such drugs places people in the market for the very hard drugs, as well as the drug of choice, will he consider decriminalising the use of cannabis?"

Mr Flood replied: "I can tell you that under my watch I will never put forward a proposal that cannabis should be decriminalised. I have considered a number of arguments on this issue and the best advice available to me is that cannabis can, unfortunately, be something of a gateway-type drug."

The long-term effects of using cannabis were not yet known, he added. "There are different views on this issue, and certainly there is not yet sufficient information to suggest that the continuous use of cannabis is not a harmful practice. So, therefore, if the Government was to decriminalise the use of cannabis, it would be sending, in my opinion, the wrong signal to the young people of Ireland."