Crisis in the Coombe

Special report by Ken Powell -with additional reporting by Jamie Hannigan and Etain McGuckian

DRUGS have been dealt openly in the Meath Street area of the Liberties for the past few months. Garda operations have significantly decreased dealing in Fatima Mansions and St Michael’s Estate, but the pushers haven’t gone away. They have moved into the Coombe.

"You couldn’t get in the door for the crowds of people that were at the meeting," one Brabazon Street woman told the Liberty. "Concerned Parents came from as far away as Ballybrack and Kilnamanagh in Tallaght to show their solidarity and support for anti-drugs activity in the city," she said.

More than 300 people — men, women and boys and girls of all ages — jammed St Catherine’s hall in School Street last Tuesday night (February 16) for a meeting organised by the Coalition of Communities Against Drugs (COCAD) to address the drugs crisis in the Coombe.

A Meath Street grocer told the Liberty: "Traders here are sick of all the scumbags clogging up our streets. The cops haven’t a chance, the dealers are so organised they buy and sell the cops inside-out.

"The junkies even know the Gardai’s shifts. Whenever the ‘Old Bill’ is coming down Meath Street you see the junkies scampering into laneways or sprinting round to the Coombe. They’d beat Linford Christie in a sprint when the cops are coming.

"Even if a cop stops and searches one dealer, all the gear will be moved by someone else while the cop is occupied. When a dealer arrives with the gear, it’s like feeding time at the zoo. You’d want to see the junkies running after whoever arrives with the merchandise to believe it. It’s like you’d imagine famine victims running after a bread van."

Heroin-dealing has reached epidemic levels on the streets and in the laneways of a pocket of the Coombe near where Brabazon Street and Meath Street meet. Local traders say they are "sick to the back teeth of dealing outside their shops, parents are concerned for the welfare of their children."

A shop worker who lives in the area said: "This neighbourhood has gone to the dogs. Day and night the place is riddled with druggies. I’d be afraid for my life to go out at night around here.

"Groups of up to 40 druggies gather at night on the tarmac football pitch at the bottom of Brabazon Street taking drugs with their ghetto blasters blaring. Some nights they light fires. The cops won’t go in there. I’ve called them lots of times but they rarely come."

A Garda source admitted they rarely go in there for fear of getting attacked with stones, bottles and other projectiles, as they have in the past. A Garda received a black eye in an altercation with drug addicts near Brabazon Street on January 8 last.

Dublin Corporation erected a railing to try and keep drug addicts out but they broke a bar on the railing and have no problem getting access to shoot-up and cause disturbances. A local resident said: "The Corporation said they’d put up a double railing before Christmas but that hasn’t been done yet."

Minister for Justice John O’Donoghue went for a walkabout (at SWICN’s invitation) in the area shortly before Christmas, but little has changed despite a slightly increased police presence.

The Meath Street grocer says the Minister didn’t see much on his walkabout: "The ‘Old Bill’ were tipped off. They cleared the junkies off the streets and Corporation workers got rid of the rubbish on the morning before he came down," he said.

"It was the same when the President came down to do the official opening of the Coombe creche before. The place was pristine for her arrival. But mothers and children coming and going from the Connolly Children’s Centre see junkies buying and injecting drugs every day," he added.

The laneway leading off the bottom of Meath Street into Ashgrove is nicknamed ‘Needle Paradise’ by locals. One man said: "You see needles all over the place, junkies pulling condom wrappers out of their arses and shooting up at all times of the day. We’ve asked the Corporation to put up gates at the Ashgrove arch. That’s where it all revolves around on Meath Street."

A nearby locksmith agrees that the drugs problem has spiralled out of control: "I’ve been trading here for three years and it’s been going on all that time but it’s worse than ever at the moment. You see them dealing outside from early morning until late at night.

"They exchange drugs openly, hand-to-hand. Sometimes you see cars pulling up and people get out of them and drop stuff down that laneway [he gestures towards ‘Needle Paradise’]. I don’t know who they are or where they come from but it’s very bad for business. People are afraid to come into the area," he said.

Anti-drugs community activists accept local Gardai are doing their best but are still hampered by a lack of resources. Ken Fitzgerald said: "We understand the Gardai’s hands are tied to an extent. Every addict on Meath Street could be picked up, but they will just be processed and released an hour later.

Concerned Parent Ken Fitzgerald told The Liberty: "What the attraction is I do not know but for whatever reason the Meath Street area has become the main focus of Dublin’s street heroin trade.

"Time was community workers like myself would know the addicts around the Liberties, they’d be our own friends and family members, people we grew up with. Now we walk up and down Meath Street and we would recognise hardly any of the addicts.

"There are addicts and dealers coming from all over the city, from as far away as Tallaght and from all over the Northside. It’s difficult enough for us to keep an eye on addicts from our own community, it is outrageous that the Liberties is being swamped by addicts and dealers from outside," declared Ken Fitzgerald.

Inspector Gerry Lovett of Kevin Street, who attended the COCAD meeting, told the Liberty: "Gardai cannot solve drugs. All we can do is move them around. We will continue to hunt, chase and charge people as we get the evidence. Unlike COCAD, we act totally within the law. We get the evidence and bring it before the courts. They do not.

"In recent times the problem has shifted from Dolphin’s Barn to Fatima Mansions, onto St Michael’s Estate, into St Augustine Street and now down to Meath Street and the Coombe."