A vigilant community tries to keep the Kingdom clean

Drugs are a feature of every Irish town, and picture-postcard Killarney is
no different, reports CATHERINE CLEARY, Drugs and Crime Correspondent

With the jaded nonchalance of a teenager, the 15-year-old leaned against
the wall of the youth centre and grinned. "Hash is easy to get." Ecstasy,
too, although the supply can be patchy, he said.

There is a "smoking section" in one of the school toilets. If they don't
have it, there are people who will get cannabis for you.

He does not use it. Neither do his friends who are there to play table
tennis and basketball on a Friday night. But they know people who do.

Earlier that day a 14-year-old girl saw her first lump of cannabis resin. A
boy was bragging he had "Mexican grass" and unwrapped the small brown lump
on the street.

Just another tale about inner city youth culture. Only it's not. This is
Killarney, the heart of the Kingdom of Kerry 200 miles from Dublin and,
until three years ago, even farther from its drug scene.

The town is probably the same as any other town in Ireland, where ecstasy,
cannabis and to a growing extent speed are available. In Killarney some
people believe it started in the hot summer of 1995. Groups of up to 400
teenagers would gather to take ecstasy at beaches. Those who saw the
parties described people "jumping round like lunatics, completely off their
heads".

It seemed ecstasy parties replaced beach cider parties almost overnight.
Gardai, more used to small-town problems such as fist-fights after closing
time, were caught off guard. Parents panicked.

A Cork man, described as the area's first real drug dealer, arrived in
Kerry, complete with a big car and gold rings. Then one night he got a
visit from the local IRA unit. He was beaten up and a gun was shoved in his
mouth. Someone set fire to a caravan belonging to his right-hand man.

In the following year there were 13 vigilante attacks in north Kerry. In
one attack before Christmas 1996 a man was tarred and feathered in his home
while a gang smashed everything in the house. Most attacks were against
"outsiders" suspected of supplying the growing drug market.

Until summer 1995 most people associated the Kerry drug scene with
"hippies" and "new age travellers". Smoking pot, like brewing poitin, was
something done by the hairy few in the hills.

On another level, the Kerry and west Cork coastline was used to land large
hauls of drugs, mainly cannabis, for shipment to Britain and Europe. One
man, believed to have organised most of the trafficking, limited his
operation after a gang tried to abduct him.

Killarney had the unhappy honour of having the first recorded ecstasy death
in Ireland. In the early 1990s a teenager who had been living in England
arrived home. Shortly after his return he collapsed in the middle of the
day in his parents' home and died.

Dr Denis O'Donovan remembers the case. In his 44 years as town coroner it
was the first death related to illegal drugs. "He just died suddenly, and
the postmortem showed he had consumed ecstasy." Dr O'Donovan has issued
warnings about drug use. "But a coroner saying something like that is just
wasting his sweetness on the desert air."

Killarney's Juvenile Liaison Officer, Garda Cathal Walshe, gives drug talks
in town and rural schools. In 1995 he started giving talks to primary
schools. In one classroom of 12-year-olds he asked them to name the drugs
they knew. Their street slang filled the blackboard. Television has a lot
to do with it.

"I was showing a cycle safety video to a class yesterday. I asked what the
cyclist had done wrong. One boy said, he ran a red light. Now that's not
Kerry lingo." Money is available to teenagers; the tourist industry makes
it difficult not to get a summer job or part-time work.

Gardai responded to the problem by setting up a divisional drugs unit. Its
chief, Insp Barry O'Rourke, attended public meetings of up to 800 people in
Killarney hotels when the concern was at its height. Sgt Declan Liddane and
four other gardai run the unit from Tralee, targeting dealers and depending
on local information.

Gangs in Cork and Limerick supply most of the drugs. Smaller dealers pick
up their regular amounts: a 9oz block of cannabis resin would be a
weekend's supply plus a batch of ecstasy tablets.

Gardai recently arrested an 18year-old Cork girl at a nightclub in
Killarney. She was carrying 50 ecstasy tablets and a large amount of cash
in her bra. In a separate case, a 22-year-old Killarney hairdresser was
convicted of selling ecstasy in Tralee's pubs.

One in three dealers in the area are middle-class young people, according
to local sources. Ecstasy users tend to take half-tablets, perhaps more
mindful of the cost than minimising any adverse reaction. Those making
serious money from drugs in the area are few, local sources say. And the
only violence associated with the trade has been the vigilante attacks,
which have subsided.

About two miles outside Killarney a community has complained bitterly about
one man who moved in some years ago. Locals describe a stream of traffic to
the remote location, intimidation and "anti-social behaviour".

Public meetings have been held, including one attended by the Minister for
Justice, Mr O'Donoghue. At one, the local priest reported a dead dog had
been dumped in the church confession box.

When the ecstasy scene started up the drug was sold openly in pubs in
smaller towns in south Kerry. There have been 150 arrests for possession in
the last 18 months. Gardai were dealing with a new sort of crime.

"If there had been an upsurge in burglary people were going to report it,"
Insp O'Rourke said. "But there isn't an injured party with drugs. We don't
get people reporting to us as victims of crime, saying they have been sold
drugs."

According to local reports, there were 16 prosecutions for dealing offences
in Kerry in 1997. Concern has subsided as parents educate themselves and
their children. Locals believe the reorganisation of the Garda and the
introduction of a special drugs unit have produced results.

Killarney is a great place to live, Insp O'Rourke said. "The town is
appalled at crime. It is a relatively crime-free town."

There have been few seizures of cocaine and none of heroin. For some
inner-city Dublin communities this still makes small-town Ireland a
comparative haven.