RETURN OF THE CONCERNED PARENTS

LEFT: Inspector Gerry Lovett of Kevin Street Garda Station

LITTLE had been heard of the Concerned Parents Against Drugs (CPAD) in the south city for some years, until last week’s march on the Weaver Square homes of two alleged drug dealers. COCAD, a citywide anti-drugs coalition to whom CPAD is affiliated, hogged most of the headlines in recent years.

The Liberties is where the Concerned Parents movement was born in the 1980’s. Sixteen years after it all began, Concerned Parents are marching on dealers’ homes again. Anti-drug activity in the Liberties has come full circle.

Ken Fitzgerald, a Michael Malin House resident, has been a Concerned Parents member for 16 years and hopes to run for Sinn Fein in the south inner city in the upcoming local elections. He told the Liberty that CPAD has grown more understanding of the heroin problem over the years but no less tolerant of drug dealing in the community.

Ken Fitzgerald said: "We have had to change. We have come to recognise that ostracising whole families is not productive. "When a family cries out for help they need the community to rally around them, not cut them off. We now accept drug addicts are part of our community the same as everybody else.

"We were wrong in the 1980s and so were other groups. We carried out forceful evictions. We refused Gardai access to public meetings back then. We viewed statutory authorities with suspicion and alienated sections of the media. We suffered from a bad press."

Concerned Parents now invite Gardai to most anti-drugs meetings. Anti-drugs activists also liaise with the EHB on drug treatment programmes and sit on community committees that co-vet prospective local authority tenants with Dublin Corporation.

At last week’s meeting Inspector Gerry Lovett of Kevin Street accused anti-drugs activists of being involved in attacks on Gardai and on homes. But Ken Fitzgerald vigorously denies this. He says there is "no question" of his or any fellow CPAD members’ involvement in such action.

Inspector Lovett admits there have been no vigilante attacks reported in the south-city district policed by his officers in the past two years. An undercover Garda was, however, threatened by three anti-drugs activists believed to be members of Sinn Fein, one of whom wielded an iron bar, when they mistook him for a heroin dealer in the Fatima Mansions flat complex last week.

Ken Fitzgerald said: "We now believe in pursuing a united approach to fight a common enemy. Community workers like ourselves, the Gardai, the Corporation, the EHB, local politicians and the addicts themselves. "We have already lost two generations since 1981. The third heroin generation is in big trouble at the moment. Nobody has all the answers, and even with all the different organisations working together we are rowing against the tide."

He continued: "At the moment it’s still a job of containment but the community is taking its destiny into its own hands again. "We don’t want to operate at the legal end, that’s for the Gardai, that is what they are paid to do. The health board has its part to play along with the other statutory bodies. Together we can get there.

"Drugs are the enemy. We have to protect our kids from the gear on streets. The time has come where we have had to draw a line in the sand and decide who is for the drugs in our communities and who is against.

"The different groups may not like getting into bed together but we now appreciate it has to be done. This is our community. These are our kids."