VOICES FROM THE EDGE

Residents and community workers in five marginalised communities in Dublin,
Cork and Limerick talk to Kathryn Holmquist after the publication of a
study which concluded that some of the Republic's public housing schemes
are the most stigmatised in Europe

* Summerhill, Dublin

In Summerhill, Dublin, 104 young people have died from drug abuse in the
past five years. "Drug abuse is almost inevitable for young people in this
area. It's all around you. For the 12 to 18-year-olds there is always the
danger of getting into trouble and getting into drugs because there is
nothing else for them to do," says Chrissy Mangan, a community activist and
mother with four children and two infant grandchildren. "You walk out the
door and see kids walking around like zombies. They're the living dead.
Some get gangrene and have legs amputated. Something needs to be done."

Ms Mangan's own son has abused drugs, has robbed cars and has been in and
out of residential care. He told her that he began abusing drugs in St
Patrick's. She became so frustrated when he was on the waiting list for one
of the 10 beds in the detox programme in Cherry Orchard, that she consulted
with detox experts and instigated her own at-home detox programme. She
managed to get her son off heroin, but then discovered that he was using it
again.

"Boys leave school at 15 and, with nothing else to do, hang around the
street and get involved in drugs and crime. Girls hang around with nothing
to do, and have babies. They talk about the X case and the C case, but I
know of at least ten 14-year-old girls in this area who have become
mothers. The priest said that two couples got married in the last year and
50 babies were christened," she says.

There was a riot in Summerhill in September 1996 when tenants attempted to
evict suspected drug dealers. Ms Mangan believes that Concerned Parents
made a difference and that since their marches and meetings stopped, drugs
have been creeping back in again.

"There's a feeling that the police are doing nothing about the drugs
problem. It's very frustrating when you are trying to clear the area of
drug dealers and the police are protecting those that are selling drugs,"
she says.

Few young people in the area do the Leaving Cert and even fewer go on to
third level education, she says. Ms Mangan's own daughter, Paula, got a
certificate from Maynooth as a social entrepreneur in November, making her
one of the few from the area to achieve at third level. "There was only one
young fella in the whole area that ever went to TCD and that was years
ago," says Ms Mangan.

"Our young people are not any less intelligent, it's just a question of
opportunity," she adds. "It doesn't matter what qualifications you have -
it is the area you live in." A community college would at least give an
incentive to the young people of the area to do the Leaving Cert, she
believes. A new community college planned for Sean McDermott Street was
supposed to open this year, but has not even been built, she says. "We're
used to broken promises. You have to fight for everything you have. You
shouldn't have to keep fighting, but in this area you get nothing unless
you do."

* Ballinacurra, Limerick

In Ballinacurra, Co Limerick, children as young as 12 are using drugs and
truancy is a huge problem, says Michael O'Mahony, a St Vincent de Paul
volunteer. He cites the lack of stable, male role models and the absence of
sports and recreational facilities as the main problems. Since St Mary's
Park baths were knocked to the ground, kids swim in the sewerage pipes in
the river.

Ballinacurra is an isolated, poor community where the politicians never
bother to canvas because nobody votes, he says. "People feel powerless and
there's a sense that they don't feel the have any say in what's happening,"
he says. The youth club has blocked-off windows like Fort Apache, the
Bronx. "It almost challenges the boys by giving the message, `bet you
couldn't break in'," he observes. People are beginning to try to get youth
clubs and football clubs off the ground. "A woman is selling secondhand
clothes in the market on Saturdays to try to raise funds for a youth
project and then she hears the GAA get £20 million," he says.

Families have difficulty keeping children in school because there is no
history of third-level education, which simply isn't seen as an option.
Those who stay in school, struggle to do the Leaving. "Parents who are
uneducated do not have the means to help children with difficult homework
and they cannot afford, like middle-class parents can, to buy grinds," he
says. Secondary-school students quickly get left behind their peers when
they can't afford the books, school field trips, or the £20 fee for the
Leaving. When they are left behind all the time, they start asking "what's
the point?" Michael says.

Social exclusion makes young people angry and with no way to channel this
anger, energy and drive, young people become self-destructive and turn to
drugs and crime, he reasons. "We need to help them find a way to channel
their great energy.

What we need is a vision." The St Vincent de Paul is working one-to-one
with young people, helping them to study, providing them with grinds and
"taking them from the hurlyburly of the school ground into a safe
environment where there is no bullying". The organisation is also trying to
address the "huge lack of parenting skills" and to improve parents'
abilities to cope with their teenage children. "If the current Government
policy continues, there are vast areas of huge social deprivation which are
going to go out of control. We need creative, visionary thinking and an
overall strategy. Throwing money at the problem doesn't work. The
Partnership 2000 programme, for example, looks fine on paper, but those who
really need it are too disempowered to get involved."

* North Clondalkin

There are 13 public housing estates in the North Clondalkin area, which
includes Neilstown and Ronanstown, and the area has been targeted by the
National Anti-Poverty Strategy.

Unemployment is as high as 70 per cent in places, 25 per cent of households
are one-parent families and the population under the age of 14 can tip
levels of 40 per cent or more. A sign of the authorities' institutionalised
attitude of neglect to the area is the fact that North Clondalkin has no
office space - not even an ISDN line (a highspeed digital phone line for
fax and computer use) for anyone who wants to set up an office or community
initiative, says John Bennett, a community worker with the Community
Development Project, one of 80 such projects funded by the Department of
Social Welfare around the country. There are 15,000 people living in 3,500
homes, yet there is no bank and only one post office-cum-shop.

Parents who need to do a big shop in Dunnes Stores must pay for child care
or else bring all the children on the bus. There are no sports facilities
and while there are some local youth clubs, the numbers they are able to
cater for are very few.

After listing these major inadequacies - which are no fault of the people
who live in North Clondalkin - he stresses the positive aspects of life in
North Clondalkin, which boasts a new community centre. "It's not a
dependency colony," he asserts. "North Clondalkin is a thriving human
community with a myriad of local community organisations."

There is a local newsletter, The North Clondalkin Buzz, and "hundreds" of
local football teams, youth clubs, childcare groups, residents and tenants
groups and community development projects, he says.

In Estates On The Edge, Anne Power asserts that lone parenthood is a major
destabilising influence on estates, but Bennett disagrees. Lone parent
families are misunderstood and in his experience do not have any more
problem children than two-parent families do. "There's a feeling here that
the media does not respect disadvantaged groups. The media would not get
away with saying things about bankers that they say about lone parents.
Lone parents are trying to get to ways to become active in relation to
personal development. We have a lone parents information project,
particularly in relation to violence, which can be ongoing for some. "Lone
parent families may be poor, but that does not mean they are not good,
sound, functioning families. You don't have to have a man in the house to
rear children properly. And poverty does not mean abuse or neglect. The
vast majority of children of lone parents are not being neglected. Poorer
parents are probably more conscious of the love and attention that children
require than wealthy people."

The difficulties experienced by people in North Clondalkin are, he feels
due not to the estates themselves but "to the bias within our
socio-economic system towards people who have already rather than those who
never had. . . There are choices being made about resources and areas like
this constantly lose out. For years we were told Ireland was in recession;
now Ireland has the money and it has decided not to do anything about
poverty. The problems found in housing estates is a poverty issue, not a
housing issue. You can't blame bricks and mortar."

* Knocknaheeney, Cork

Knocknaheeney, on the north side of Cork City, has 300 houses with a high
proportion of lone parents, teenagers and unemployed people. The St Vincent
de Paul sees it as one of the areas of greatest need in the country.

Liam O'Callaghan, a volunteer who himself grew up on the north side of Cork
city, says that children walking home from school have been killed by
joyriders and that there is a serious drugs problem. He cites the stark
evidence of Knocknaheeney's marginalisation: no buses after 8 p.m.; no
direct bus service to third-level education (while there is for young
people on the south side); no third-level institution and no community
centre for Knocknaheeney's 40 flourishing community and sporting groups.
The nearby Apple Computer factory draws most of the workers from the
southside of the city, rather than Knocknaheeney, says Mr O'Callaghan. The
north side has a grossly inadequate road structure for lorries and other
large vehicles, which discourages development of further factories which
might provide jobs.

People in Knocknaheeney are materially better off than they were 50 years
ago thanks to welfare benefits, but there is a cultural poverty caused by
isolation, ghettoisation and marginalisation, Mr O'Callaghan believes.
"Cork is a tale of two cities, the best of times on the south side and the
worst of times on the north side," he says.

When he compares life today in Knocknaheeney, an estate on a hill
overlooking Cork Harbour, with his childhood in Shandon Street, he wonders
why he and his family were happy in a cramped, four-roomed terraced house
with a toilet in the shed, while people today with relatively larger
houses, higher incomes and TVs - all paid for by social welfare - are
unhappy. He traces the problem back to the creation of Knocknaheeney as an
"artificial community" after the second World War. People of "a certain
type" were brought from houses in the city to new houses on the hill. It
was the time of the TB epidemic, and it was thought that people would be
healthier in new, larger houses with indoor bathrooms and gardens in which
to grow fresh vegetables. In hindsight, however, the move distanced people
from the city's amenities and destroyed a sense of community. Liam recalls
that as a youth he had many cultural and sporting facilities on his
doorstep - such as cricket, fishing, the opera house, a choir in which Liam
learned the music of Palestrina, hurling, soccer, the famous Sunnyside
boxing club and a Shakespeare centre which nursed budding actors. Today the
youths he visits in Knocknaheeney have none of these things. Over the
years, Knocknaheeney became a "dumping ground" for people who failed to pay
rent in public housing elsewhere in the city.

"Because the population is all one sort of person, there's no upward
motivation. They don't go for further education," he says. The solution, he
thinks, is to demolish much of the north side and rebuild it as better
balanced communities where, say, 70 per cent of the people are employed,
educated and upwardly mobile and only 30 per cent are poor and uneducated.
In Liam's childhood, the community around Shandon Street was mixed, which
meant that "you could see successful people around so that there was a
motivation to be employed. There were opportunities for uneducated youths,
who could start out in unskilled jobs in an informal apprenticeship system.
A father might have a connection which could lead to work for his son.
Today, people in Knocknaheeney are disconnected from opportunity because
they are ghettoised amongst other unemployed people. Even the outlet of
emigration is closed to them, since today it is the educated, marketable
young people who emigrate and leave the uneducated behind."

* Cherry Orchard

Cherry Orchard, which includes the public housing estates of Gallanstown,
Croftwood, Elmdale and Clover Hill, was built in 1983-86. Marion Doyle, a
community worker there, says that 65 per cent of the 5,200 population is
under 25. There is one shop. There is no school in Cherry Orchard and
parents collectively pay a total of £4,500 per week to ferry kids to and
from school. There is no doctor's surgery, no postbox, no public telephone.
Unemployment levels vary throughout the area: in Gallanstown, unemployment
is 80 per cent; in Clover Hill, it is 45 per cent.

Through a development company and negotiations with the Eastern Health
Board and the Department of Education, "things are starting to happen",
says Ms Doyle. A junior school which goes up to second class is being
built. "It's a bit late in the day but it's a start," says Ms Doyle. An
extension being built on to the Orchard Community Centre will house the
youth clubs and the community development project, as well as a financial
advice centre. The major issue in the area is the need for youth projects
which would deal with issues surrounding childhood and adolescence.

It is only a very small minority who cause anti-social behaviour, says Ms
Doyle. She and others are trying to keep working against the stigmatising
image of Cherry Orchard by developing positive projects for young people.
"The children are our future and we have to make things happen for them,"
she says.

The Cherry Orchard Equine Project has received £1.5 million in backing over
three years from the Government. The idea is to train early school leavers
who love horses into working with horses as a career. The Eastern Health
Board is developing two buildings side by side, one a family centre and the
other a rehabilitation centre for children and young people become involved
in drugs. The "children", as she calls them, who are smoking heroin will be
detoxed at the hospital, then rehabilitated back on the estate. Parents
hope that the availability of follow-up and support on the estate should
greatly increase their chances of staying off drugs.

Despite the drugs problem, she remains optimistic: "There's a lot to be
done in the area, but we're on the ball and we're not taking second best
any more," says Ms Doyle.