Republican News · Thursday 23 January 1997
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)
The huts are back By Rita O'Reilly
Two drug-watch huts have been erected again in Tallaght while two more are to go up in the coming week. The huts have appeared in the same area where,18 months ago, efforts to stop drug pushing encouraged other communities to follow suit.
Women in Fettercairn say they had to go back out on the streets because the drug problem is as bad again as it was back then. They blame the failure of the Gardai and other state agencies to come in and back them up.
Betty Caverley told An Phoblacht: ``We had a meeting with the Drugs Squad back in October. They told us crime in our area was down 90% because of all that's been going on and asked us how long we'd stay out there. I said at the time it would be for as long as it takes. It has to be - the only alternative is to move out of the area and none of us want to do that.''
In November, three Tallaght community drug activists were arrested on trumped-up charges by the Garda. Locals believe this gave the green light to drug pushers and joyriders in the area. Over the Christmas period, a number of drug-watch huts were burned or attacked in Killinarden and Knockmore by youths in stolen cars.
Last Monday night, a Garda car was rammed by stolen cars in the Glenshane estate. Dozens of young males participated in the third `riot' in one week there. But as tyre marks criss-crossed the estate's roads on the following morning, the signs that the authorities are content to throw their hands up in the air were already evident.
Appeals for ramps to be erected to stop joyriding have been ignored to date, Mary Keegan of Drumcairn estate says. In addition, South Dublin County Council has yet to consult local residents groups about its housing policies for the area. An attempt to legally evict a family of drug dealers from Kilmartin has again been delayed through the courts, frustrating the gains of the anti-drug campaign there.
Sylvia Davis points out that 90 of the children on her small street are under 13. ``The young fellas on drugs now, there's no hope of us getting to them all. It's the toddlers we're fighting for now.''
Read labels carefully! By Rita O'Reilly
Drug murderers, not `drug barons', are what major drug dealers should be called, two large Dublin drugs meetings heard last week. The tabloid term was given the thumbs down by Paddy Malone, Chair of ICON, at a packed meeting in Séan MacDermott Street last Thursday. ``When we give them that name we give them credibility,'' he said, going on to promise that 1997 would see the biggest drug criminals in Ireland named and marched on.
The following night, Cabra Committee Against Drugs Chair Paul Quinn told a thousand people at a meeting in the old Grand Cinema that anti-drug `vigils' will start up in Cabra in the coming weeks. ``We're not going to do patrols - that's what the Gardai are supposed to do, we are going to do vigils,'' he said.
On the previous night the presence of Gardai and residents outside the home of a man alleged to be still dealing drugs in the Ballybough area looked like a joint vigil, but it was anything but. It was here on the previous Tuesday that Jimmy Mulhall was arrested before being beaten in Garda custody. On Thursday, local public representatives Councillor Christy Burke, Tony Gregory TD and Joe Costello TD took Jimmy's place, walking up the flight of stairs to knock on the dealer's door in front of a crowd of around 500 people.
By Tuesday night, 21 January, 21 drug activists had been arrested in the space of 21 days. ``How many pushers?'' came the call in Ballybough, again at a picket outside the unrepentant dealer's flat. A crowd of around 300 people marched to Fitzgibbon Street Garda station. It was the fourth protest there in seven days over drug arrests - an indictment of the station where, as Tony Gregory reminded people, miscarriage of justice victim Nicky Kelly was once ``beaten up by thugs in uniform'', but an indictment also of the drugs strategy emanating from Garda management and the Department of Justice.
In the Sunday Independent, columnist Eilis O'Hanlon marked these days with a mythical piece outlining how all of this was down to the IRA's Green Book plans to stage a takeover in the 26 Counties through issues like drug abuse. The columnist claimed that ``according to the most recent Garda figures, there have been more than 300 punishment beatings and five shootings by the IRA in Dublin in recent months''. An Phoblacht asked the Garda Press Office to comment on these claims by Ireland's biggest-selling newspaper. The Press Office confessed it did not know where in the world the Sunday Indo got its figures from. ``We just compile figures on assaults, including domestic assaults, it's the media who put labels on them afterwards,'' a spokesperson said.
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