It is close to midnight on a Friday on Dublin’s Camden Street when a young woman, walking alone, tries to call her friend, but her phone turns dark.
She has been given directions to take a left after leaving the Wetherspoon’s pub where she will find her friend parked in a blue Skoda. She has walked as instructed, but cannot find the vehicle.
A man approaches to ask if she is all right. Patrick Brady is welfare officer with the Nee-Naw support van, Dublin City Council’s newest night-time service that provides a safe and secure place for people out late in the city centre. His association with the initiative is clear from his purple jumper, a uniform that matches the van’s branding.
The team provides a range of services, including emergency medical attention and a quiet space where people can calm down or sober up. It assisted more than 500 people throughout its seven-week pilot phase this summer.
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The woman, aged no more than 20, is one of the first people the Nee-Naw team meet on their autumn run that started last Friday. Brady offers her a powerbank to charge her phone. At first she politely declines, but Brady says: “This is what we’re here to do … We’re here to help.”
She plugs her phone in, at which point another friend appears also looking lost. Speaking in Irish together they figure out the directions to the Skoda, realising she should have taken a different left turn.
Countless people, young and old, pass by throughout the night, particularly after 1am when the street, lined with pubs and late bars, is busiest. Nearly all have heard about the Nee-Naw, even though it was only operational for two months starting this summer.
Noticing the van, two middle-aged women say how much good it does for the city’s young people going out at night. Brady introduces himself to the pair and tells them the Nee-Naw is there to help everyone. It has water bottles, wipes, phone chargers and flipflops. Medics and security are on standby for anything from an inconvenience to a crisis.
The owner of Flannery’s bar on Camden Street, Paul Clinton, says the Nee-Naw is a “godsend”. He estimates up to 10,000 people could be around the street on a busy Friday or Saturday night. “If even just 1 per cent of them are unlucky and get into trouble … there’s someone here to help them now,” he says.
Student emergency medical technicians Chloe Sutton and Jen Murtagh are volunteers with the service. Over the seven-week trial period, Sutton says, they dealt with two incidents of fractured skulls, lots of bloody feet cut from dancing on glass and the odd person who was too drunk to function.
She tells of an 18-year-old man who drank nearly half a litre of vodka at a “pre-drinks” session before stepping foot in a bar.
“We saw him immediately when he got off the bus and knew he was in a bad way. Also, it was so early in the night that there was just no coming back from it,” Sutton says. “We sat with him for about two hours in total, giving him water and food whenever he wanted. His friends waited with him. They didn’t go to whatever club they planned to, which was incredible really. About 15 lads [were] all waiting to see that their friend would be all right.”
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Ray O’Donoghue, Dublin City Council’s first night-time economy adviser, colloquially referred to as the “Dublin night mayor”, says the project is designed to provide “reassurance, care, and safety for people on a night out”
It supports the emergency services too, he says, as it takes a “bit of work off the guards and the fire brigade”.
“We’ve got overwhelmingly positive feedback from it. Everyone seems to think it’s a good initiative and I think that’s important. It has a tangible effect on people … people see that we’re doing something to help”.
O’Donoghue says there is no shortage of working groups, taskforces and “people speaking around tables”.
“But this is physically at the centre of Dublin’s night-time economy that people can actually use,” he says.
The Nee Naw will be parked on the corner of Camden Street and Grantham Street every Friday and Saturday night for the next six to eight weeks as part of the council’s autumn run. The service will also operate on other days during university freshers week and Culture Night.
