'We will not let drugs take hold of our rural communities' - UUP's Diana Armstrong to lead adjournment debate
UUP Deputy Leader and Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA, Diana Armstrong, will tomorrow lead an Assembly adjournment debate on the impact of drugs and drug-related intimidation on rural communities in her constituency.
Speaking ahead of the debate, Diana Armstrong said: “Drugs have taken hold in rural communities across Northern Ireland, including in parts of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, and I am not going to stand in that Chamber and pretend otherwise.
"The Ulster Unionist Party will not sit back and let this take over our rural communities.
"Only recently the PSNI stopped vehicles in Enniskillen and seized around two and a half kilos of suspected Class B drugs. That is not someone’s personal supply, that is distribution.
“What worries me as much is what we cannot see.
"In a rural community everybody knows everybody. It is harder to spot the dealing, and it is far harder for a victim to come forward when they know the police car at their door will be noticed by the whole townland.
"Some people have simply decided that reporting it will not change anything anyway.
“The Executive’s own report last year found older men in rural areas being pressured into carrying drugs to Dublin and back because nobody would suspect them.
"It found rural sports clubs in the west being targeted by gangs trying to groom young people. That was a government report, and a year on I want to know what has been done about it.
“These gangs pick on people with something to lose. A home, a job, a family, a farm. They know where you live and they know where you work.
“I will be pressing the Justice Minister on one thing in particular.
"The Executive programme paying for this work ends in March 2027 and we still do not know what replaces it.
"Families being threatened over somebody’s drug debt cannot wait on a programme that has not been agreed”.
Ms Armstrong added that ‘if you know what is going on in your own area, you do not have to put your name to anything’.
"Crimestoppers is anonymous,” she added. “That is how this gets broken.
"“Rural families deserve exactly the same protection as anyone living in Belfast. The fact that this is harder to see in the countryside cannot mean it gets less attention.”