VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS THE PROBLEMS OF YOUTHS

A video about young people on St Michael's Estate in Dublin gave PADRAIG
O'MORAIN a sense of childhood and adolescence denied

"It makes me feel terrible because I have a little brother and he's not
allowed to play out at all and he has to be stuck in the house all the time
because of all the junkies and that and I hope they get rid of them."

Jane, the speaker, is a young girl in the blue uniform of the Mercy school
in Goldenbridge, Dublin. To the observer it seems quite startling that one
so young should have to speak of heroin addicts as an everyday reality.

It would be easy not to find it startling because she is speaking in a video
about St Michael's Estate, Inchicore, Dublin, which is, literally, yards
away from the school.

As Brian Healy, co-ordinator of St Michael's Parish Youth Project says,
"When you mention young people and St Michael's Estate it equals drugs, it
equals violence" in the public mind.

But the great virtue of the video is that, by letting the young people talk
for themselves, it gets across the fact that, in Healy's words, "they are
people, they are flesh and blood".

It is, perhaps, the seriousness of the problems with which people who are so
young have to concern themselves, that is most striking about the video,
Here We Are, made by students in media production at the Senior College,
Ballyfermot.

Jenny and Carol are in their early teens. "The worst thing is finding
syringes," says Jenny. "You see people sticking them in - terrible," says
Carol who adds that the Corporation should vet prospective tenants and
refuse to allow people using or selling heroin to move in "until we get this
area cleaned out".

Once again there is the impression of very young teenagers having to concern
themselves with matters more suitable to people far ahead of them in years -
a sense of childhood and adolescence denied. There is also a strong sense in
the video that nobody wants to listen to these kids.

"What I would like to say is that we are not shit, that we are not someone
you can throw in a corner, that we all want to say things and just to listen
to us," says Sarah. "The Corporation and the politicians and the TDs just
don't want to hear us. I think that actually they are afraid of what we are
going to say."

"They don't care about the rundown areas, that's being honest with you,"
says Adrienne. But as far as she is concerned, people living in "better"
areas are in no way superior to her neighbours on St Michael's Estate:
"Nobody is perfect in any area, no matter if they come from the poshest part
of Dublin or the dump end of Dublin you will not get a perfect person no
matter how much they want to make themselves out to be perfect because
believe me I tried it and I can't be anyone but myself."

When asked what they want for the area they look for what most of us take
for granted: swings for the children, a football area, better maintenance of
the flats, an absence of drug pushing and addiction. Sadly, they have little
enough reason to believe the wider society will help them to achieve these
things.

And if the wider society cannot enable young people to achieve their
legitimate aspirations then, says Brian Healy, "what we do is say to a
section of society we are sorry but you don't fit the way we want you to fit
and therefore you are to be forgotten about".

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"