WATCHERS REPLACE MARCHERS

Communities took to the streets with megaphones and muscle to stop drug
dealing in their areas, but what has been happening since?

Last year they warmed themselves around home-made braziers and barricaded
the doors to stop heroin dealers and addicts using their block. Now John
Mullen and his fellow-volunteers in Ballymun's James Connolly Tower drug
watch have a flat, a closed-circuit camera and a mobile phone.

In Ballymun, as in the rest of Dublin's working-class communities, the
response to drugs has moved on from large public marches. The marches which
still happen receive little publicity.

The effort has died down, partly because it has shown results and because
the meetings and 24-hour watches took their toll on people's energy and
personal lives. There is also a feeling that the community effort has
finally been channelled by the authorities, including the Garda, the
Eastern Health Board and Dublin Corporation.

In Ballymun, the move of residents to regain control of areas lost to
drug-dealing has been resourced by Dublin Corporation and endorsed by the
Garda. Mr Mullen and five other people run the block watch out of a
converted caretaker's flat on the ground floor. The corporation funded
refurbishment of the abandoned ground-floor flats, some of which were
rat-infested. More than 18 block watch groups were each given a £700 grant
for equipment.

In James Connolly Tower, they bought a tiny security camera and a snooker
table, so that the afternoons see the watch operating as a youth club. They
have a deep-fat fryer to make chips for some of the people who come to the
flat, which has become a kind of community centre. Each block watch has a
mobile phone, funded by the corporation and programmed to ring any one of
six numbers to alert the necessary people.

In Pearse Tower, the children line up to tap-dance in front of their
security camera. Miriam Lynch, who has been seconded from the corporation
to the Ballymun Local Drugs Task Force, says the watches have "reclaimed
the blocks for the people who live there. For a long time people's only
reaction was to build a shutter and stay behind it."

Last week members of the watches were presented with certificates by the
gardai in recognition of their efforts. There is pride and a new hope but
problems remain. Ballymun was once described as junkie's paradise, but the
dealing which once went on in the landings and stairwells has been pushed
into the open spaces.

There are those who have been failed by the system. In one block, a young
mother says she is afraid to let her children out of her flat as she has
been threatened by addicts and dealers who live there. She has walked on to
her landing to find addicts injecting themselves in the groin.

They spit at her and roar obscenities as she crosses the road to do her
shopping, she says. The dealers stand and count their money in front of
her. The block watch was maintained for nine months and then a gang arrived
and smashed the doors, flinging chairs around the room.

Elsewhere in the city, community workers do not want to become too
optimistic about progress. Bernie Howard, who works with addicts in Sean
McDermott Street Youth Project, believes the situation is about 50 per cent
better than it was a year ago, yet three young men tied nooses round their
necks already this year in the same north inner city lane, she says. Two of
the three succeeded in killing themselves.

In Rialto, they remember the day the AIB branch moved out. "There was a
bank here with all that signifies. It moves out and what takes its place?
An undertaker," says Tony Mac Carthaigh of the Rialto Community Drug Team.
Theirs is a massive problem that will need long-term solutions. "It's
beginning slightly to shift in the direction of more positive community
development."

Irene Ward of the Rialto Community Network believes the area represents "a
very hidden Dublin". Some Rialto residents who live across the road from
Fatima Mansions have never walked into the complex. "If you take the drugs
out of this area, you still have huge unemployment."

In the past, the Garda and the corporation took the attitude that
communities did not have the right to know about developments in the area.
"There are very small rumblings of change" in the right direction now.
"Whether we like it or not, the trend is partnership, and it's slow and
it's sapping of energy," Mr Mac Carthaigh says.

The body co-ordinating the efforts of the local drugs task forces is the
National Drugs Strategy Team committee. This statutory group was set up to
evaluate development plans from the 13 local task forces (12 in Dublin and
one in Cork) and recommend them to the Government.

All the agencies - the Garda, probation and welfare services, Dublin and
Cork corporations, FAS and the Departments of Justice; the Taoiseach;
Tourism, Sport and Recreation; Health; Education; and Enterprise and
Employment - are represented, along with community representatives.

The hierarchy is complicated, with the team reporting to a policy group
made up of assistant principals of the relevant departments. The overall
responsibility is held by the Cabinet sub-committee on Social Inclusion.

The team meets in its offices on Harcourt Street once a week. Committee
member and chairman of the North Inner City Drugs Task Force Fergus McCabe
believes it is essential they get the structures right. "We absolutely
urgently need an informed rational research unit to ensure that long-term
drugs policy is developed in a rational way." Such an independent unit
would help "if politically difficult decisions need to be made down the line".

Yes, he says, improvements have been made. "There will be a significant
change when there will be opportunities for communities to link in with the
partnership approach. Even if we get everybody together it's a massive job
and the question is, can we keep it at the forefront of the political
agenda? We need to get beyond a situation where we only deal in crisis."

'If you take the drugs out of this area, you still have the unemployment'

Each block watch has a mobile phone, funded by the corporation