The panel of 12, who chose Leo Higgins's sculpture Home, were experts. Not of art perhaps, but certainly of grief, of tragedy and of the devastation wrought on an inner-city community by the ugliness of heroin. There was nothing pretty or pleasing about the expertise they brought to bear.

These 12 people, mainly women, who gathered last week at the Fire Station artists' studio in Dublin's Buckingham Street were there to choose a permanent public memorial to the estimated 300 people in the area who have died as a result of drugs over the past four years. There have been 300 such deaths in the Dublin 1 postal district alone.

Higgins's sculpture was chosen from a selection of five proposals by six Irish artists. Perhaps the simplest of the five, Home will stand as an eight foot flame of gilded bronze, housed within a limestone structure. Uplights will flood the structure with light, so that it will be visible from North Strand to Ballybough - "something like a beacon", in Higgins's words.

Between them, the 12 relatives who opted for his offering have lost 13 members of their families to heroin - some to overdose, some to suicide, some to AIDS. Some have lost one person, some share a lost brother, some have seen more than one of their loved ones die. One mother among them on Wednesday night has buried four of her children.

Their coming together, to decide between presentations from artists Louise Walsh, Jackie McKenna, Michael Quane, Annette Hennessy and Brian Connolly, and from Higgins, was in some ways the final act in a process which began in December 1996. These north-inner-city residents were among those who lit a Christmas tree, donated by Dublin Corporation and decorated with silver stars - each representing a person who had died or was still suffering from the scourge of heroin. The tree was taken down in January and, though another has been faithfully erected each Christmas since in the same spot - a traffic island between upper and lower Buckingham Streets - many had expressed a wish that there should be a permanent memorial.

The Buckingham Street traffic island is significant as it was here that many of the "deals" that kept the area's heroin industry alive, were done. "It was important that the relatives and the residents took back ownership of that island," says Mick Rafferty, chairman of the Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign. "It's an area that had been taken over by dealers; it's shaken and demoralised by the extent of heroin use. This project intends to use the power of symbolism to speak for a community that has been internally damaged."

He says that since the widespread consciousness of the drugs problem, efforts have been made to address the practical needs of addicts with clinics; there has been a venting of rage and a focus on the community's organised anti-drugs marches, but no public acknowledgement of their grief.

"In a strange way," he continues, "people who don't know working-class communities do not fully appreciate that these women had great hopes for their children, cried at their first steps, rejoiced at their first success and were heartbroken when heroin took them away from them. People sometimes think `Ah, they are used to that kind of thing'. But the fact that they are used to lives of crisis does not diminish their extraordinary sense of loss and grief." Bernadette Murphy buried two sons. Her eldest, John, was 30 when he died of an overdose three years ago. Her younger boy, Declan, was found dead 18 months later, behind flats in the area, after an overdose. He was 21. "The younger boy one was only 16 when he went on hash, tablets and then heroin. He got into drugs because they were around. Drugs were everywhere - just part of a young person's life." She goes on:

"I went down to about five stone with the stress but I just had to cope. They were my children and no matter what, they'd always be my children. It did break my heart - going everywhere to get them treatment, following them everywhere, doing everything to try and get them help. And sometimes they did and sometimes they went to clinics, but well, they were weak, kept going back (on heroin).

"The first death was terrible. The second one nearly killed me," she almost whispers. "It was death after death around here then, like some kind of awful play. And I suppose I'll never get over it, never forget. Every morning when I wake I feel like crying. Before I go to bed I cry. I think of them every minute . . . I think of taking them by the hand when they were small, giving them their breakfast. I think of when I used to dress them in the mornings, laugh at them, play with them. And I wish they were with me."

Brightening, she says the memorial she has just had a part in choosing is "very important" to her. "I am delighted," she smiles, "because it means I can look at this now and know it will be there remembering my boys after I am gone."

Kathleen Hyland, too, remembers, a "tiny daughter", Catherine, who died following a "massive heart attack" after an overdose in London. She was 24 and had been using heroin for two-and-a-half years.

During those years, Kathleen and her husband had done "everything we could for her".

Sometime around Christmas 1991 this diminutive, elderly lady heard Catherine was not well. Kathleen did not hesitate and got a flight to Luton.

"It was ice and fog, but I got to her house in south-east London. Her husband was there and I was asking where she was. He was afraid to tell me, but she was in hospital. He was afraid to tell me she was on a life support machine. I went to the hospital, looking for my daughter and the nurses showed her to me, on a slab. Her face was blown out black and blue from the heart attack. So I brought her home and buried her in Glasnevin."

In a familiar refrain she tells she remembers Catherine "every day". "She was lovely, gorgeous, loved children, always laughing. She was very, very tiny - only took a size two-and-a-half shoe. "Oh, she loved her hair, a little blonde bob. She was always spotless, always loads of bubbles in her bath and the same with her baby. She always had her spotless.

"I feel very sorry for her. She was seven and they were very close. It was always only her and her, always together. My husband died last year, and my son doesn't come down to me much. So it's me and her (her granddaughter) now." The relatives own this memorial. The first moves towards its commissioning came from them, through an approach to the Fire Station studio from the Inner City Organisations Network (ICON) over 18 months ago.

Tony Sheehan, director of the Fire Station, describes the process that followed as "exhausting", "remarkable" and "certainly the most worthwhile I have ever been involved in".

With artists Robert Ballagh, Eileen McDonogh and Pauline Cummins, he drew up a list of artists that would be invited to tender for the commission. Seed funding of £10,000 was secured from the Arts Council and Dublin Corporation and a "totally inclusive" process was embarked upon.

Sheehan and Oliver Dowling, visual arts officer with the Arts Council, are as one in describing the project as "innovative" - because the local community was involved in the commissioning of the work and will also be involved in its making. Sheehan hopes discussion may be prompted on what is "public art" and how it is delivered.

The artists met with the relatives in groups and individually. "The brief was never fully written down," says Higgins, "but I realised two things were needed - to commemorate their people, to give a space to fulfil their sense of loss, and to express a looking to the future."

There were first proposals, meetings and explanations, then further consultations with the relatives, then further proposals with "mocked-up" versions of the end-products.

"I was almost embarrassed of the simplicity of my proposal," says Higgins, "but I felt that what was wanted was a strong visual statement without layers of meaning."

Rafferty described the final choice as a "a stark, uncluttered statement" - of desire for a better future, and more than that, an expectation of one. Their active participation in the evolution of this arts project has been positively empowering for these families, he says. It has not been about anger or lashing out. It has been about acknowledging a profoundly personal tragedy for each of them. In so doing, he says, it has engendered in them a sense of a right to have and express their grief. In the longer term, he feels, this memorial will speak on behalf of these families, in stronger terms. It is about knowing you have the right to stand up and say: "We did not deserve this. We did not deserve to be abandoned when our children were dying."

Raw with emotion, Kathleen Hyland, spoke plainly of what Home meant to her, in the minutes after she had chosen it. "I won't always be here to remember the beautiful children who died here. But this will be. It will a beautiful thing of hope for all the gorgeous teenagers. There's been a long time when there hasn't been much hope for all the lovely teenagers."

Home, in memory to those who have died and continue to suffer as a result of heroin in Dublin's north-east inner city, will be unveiled within the next 10 months

An exhibition of the contending projects will open at the Fire Station Artists' Studio on Monday