Families fight for fresh start in the land of the living dead

THEY come in "junkie taxis" and "junkie buses" and to Cherry Orchard's "junkie corner". Drug addicts travel from as far as Belfast and Cork to try to buy drugs, mainly heroin, in a few streets close to the Cherry Orchard train station on the outskirts of Ballyfermot.

Throughout the day and night, and particularly at weekends, a flow of cars and taxis cruises the roads around Gallanstown Drive and Cherry Orchard Avenue in search of sellers. Passengers hop out, buy the "gear," which sells for £20 per quarter-gram, and drive off.

Local children play a game called "spot the junkie". Others, some as young as 11, work as runners for the dealers.

The area is flat, windswept arid desolate. Colourful murals depict cheerful scenes a million miles from the reality of life there. Young children roam the rubbish-littered streets on horseback or play football on the roads.

The disused Semperit factory lies beyond the train station, its closure last November a further blow to a community where unemployment runs at over 60 per cent. Most of the drug-dealing goes on around a short stretch of houses which lead to the roundabout in front of the railway station.

"It's like living in the film The Night of the Living Dead round here," said one resident of Cherry Orchard Avenue who did not wish to be named. "They are all zombies walking round. If you don't take any drugs, the chances are the people you went to school with take some type of drug, usually heroin. You can get days here that in a matter of an hour you're talking 40 cars stopping. All the decent people want to get out of here.

The No 79 bus which leaves Aston Quay for Cherry Orchard is known as the junkies' express. "It's like going fishing, they're here all the time," said a driver. The junkies sit at the back of the bus and get off at "junkies' corner".

Around dinner time last Thursday, about five junkies were making the journey from the city centre to Cherry Orchard.

Three men in their early 20s dressed in jeans and anoraks boarded at Inchicore and had to borrow the fare from a couple who got on the bus in town. One was carrying a can of beer. When they got off the bus, they chatted to a youth, known locally as a drug seller, who was hanging around junkies' corner.

Two hours later, a Garda foot patrol appeared and the youths who had been hanging around quickly dispersed. The gardai searched a few youths at the roundabout on Cherry Orchard Avenue. They found a syringe on one and packed them all into a fortified four-wheel drive vehicle known as "the beast".

LATER that night, they arrested a local man in his 20s who swallowed two packets of heroin. He was charged in the night court with obstruction and remanded in Garda custody until he vomited them up. He was before the court yesterday and was released on bail bending further charges.

On a wet and windy weekday afternoon earlier in the month, I spent half an hour driving around the area with a Cherry Orchard resident. We spotted three cars and five taxis circling the area and a handful of young people hanging around as look-outs and sellers.

We drove past several abandoned and boarded-up houses on Gallanstown Lawn which are sometimes used as "shooting galleries" (where junkies inject). All of these houses will shortly be demolished by Dublin Corporation.

We entered Gallanstown Drive. "See that couple there? Now they're hanging around. There's a bloke got out of a taxi. Now he's not from around here. You know them because they're not from around here," said the resident.

Near the bus stop on "junkies' corner" a youth stood alone. "There's usually a couple of them selling there at the bus stop."

A red car with a young male driver passed by. "He's probably looking for someone to sell. See there's no one around so he'll probably just go down the road and then come back up ..." He did.

"Their objective is to get up here, get their drugs and get out without being caught. It's like a mission impossible because the police are all over the place."

Drug addicts have been attracted to the Gallanstown/Cherry Orchard area for the past two years due to the high quality of the heroin on sale. The average purity of heroin on the street is 12 per cent, but in Gallanstown/Cherry Orchard, gardai regularly seize heroin which is 50 to 60 per cent pure. There are about 20 full-time dealers who are making enough money to buy houses outside the area and drive flash cars.

OVER the past six months, the number travelling to the area has swelled. Some locals say this is largely as a result of community anti-drugs activity in other parts of Dublin city.

The area has imported an additional problem. It has taken on board a huge influx of people coming into the area and selling and it's seen as a soft area unfortunately," said local Independent councillor, Vincent Ballyfermot Jackson.

But a Garda clampdown on the Gallanstown/Cherry Orchard area over the past two to three months is aimed at toughening up the area's "soft" image.

Some 20 officers from the Divisional Task Force in Crumlin, the anti-drugs initiative, Operation Dochas, the local community gardai and the Ballyfermot Drugs Unit patrol the area on foot, in cars and jeeps. Up to 20 houses are searched every week. Taxis are regularly stopped and their occupants searched.

More than 1,000 people have been arrested in the Gallanstown/ Cherry Orchard area for drug searches and other drug-related activity this month, according to Sgt Cormac McGuinness from Ballyfermot Drugs Unit. "It would be safe to say that all of those arrested are drug addicts," he said.

About £30,000 worth of drugs, mostly heroin, £80,000 in cash, three cars and two motorcycles have been seized in house searches this month. Twenty people have been charged with drug-dealing this month and are awaiting trial. Close to £1 million worth of heroin was seized last year.

"If we moved out of that area n the morning the place would be flooded, so we're not moving out. We're there to stay," said Sgt McGuinness. "What we're doing out there is ongoing and it will be ongoing until we've solved the problem."

He said "decent people in Gallanstown and Cherry Orchard are very happy" with the Garda presence. Attempts to organise a large-scale anti-drug movement in the worst-affected parts of Cherry Orchard and Gallanstown have failed.

There have been none of the large protests and marches on houses of alleged dealers that have taken place in other parts of Dublin. COCAD, the Tallaght-based Coalition Of Communities Against Drugs, has formed links with residents in the area. But a meeting it organised late last year in the Orchard Community Centre was poorly attended. The group is, however, planning a protest march with anti-drugs groups from all over the city in April.

Residents say the lack of community activism is due to fear of the dealers. "You're afraid that if you spoke out you'd get your windows put in," said one woman who did not wish to be named.

"The community is at a crossroads and needs co-ordinated help fast," said Independent TD, Mr Tony Gregory, who recently in the Dail drew attention to the "crisis proportions" of the problem. "It can either be let continue downhill and come under the complete control of drug dealers, or the alternative is a co-ordinated response from the different State agencies on an urgent basis,"

"Every day there's another three children brought into the web," said a resident. "It's an epidemic. Unless people get up and start being counted, there won't be any living round here at all."