Selection of members

The Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use had 100 members, including an independent Chairperson and 99 members of the general public, who were selected using a random selection process.

Any adult who was resident in the State was eligible to become a member, including people who were not Irish citizens, and others who were not enrolled on the electoral register. This helped to ensure that the membership was as broadly representative of Irish society as possible.

In line with international best practice, recruitment of members was done by issuing postal invites to 20,000 randomly-selected households across Ireland. One member from each of the 20,000 households was invited to register their intertest to participate in the Assembly. From the resulting applications, 99 members were selected based on their demographic profile, ensuring that there was a perfect correspondence between the demographic profile of the Assembly and that of the wider public in terms of age, gender and geographic location, and a broad correspondence in terms of socio-economic status, ethnicity and disability status.