The mood among parents and grandparents at the Sillogue shops in Ballymun, close to where a child found and discharged a gun this week, was one of resignation but also anger and fear.
“The drugs, the guns – it’s almost become the norm. It shouldn’t be like that. It is sad,” said the mother of a 12-year-old boy.
“It’s something you stay out of, mind your own business. You focus on keeping your own children safe. That’s my priority.”
The 11-year-old who found the firearm in the north Dublin suburb on Tuesday discharged a round while in the company of a six-year-old child.
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Gardaí believe the gun had been brought into the area as part of a feud between drug gangs.
A man is understood to have returned to the scene shortly after the gun was fired and taken it before leaving the scene.
A man in his 20s has been charged over the incident and is set to appear in court later on Thursday.
In a separate incident, on Sunday, another gun was found near a playground in Coultry Park – about a 20-minute walk from Sillogue.
Another woman in Sillogue described how her 11-year-old granddaughter had gone to the shops on Tuesday with her younger sister and returned “hysterical”.
“She came in screaming. ‘Nana. Nana, there’s guards everywhere. The yup bros [boys and young men on scooters] are running around on their scooters and being chased.’ The child was hysterical. I would be so worried now,” she said.
“It’s absolutely disgraceful what’s going on, Ballymun was never like that. Never ... but the antisocial behaviour – by kids most of them – has gone really bad – drugs, shooting, windows getting put in.”
The mother of the 12-year-old said she “keeps him updated to keep him safe”.
“He does cycle home from school. I tell him: ‘There’s been trouble, be careful.’ He‘s not allowed stop off at any shops. ‘Come straight home,’ I tell him. I have him in clubs and he does his training three nights a week.”
Like others, she stresses how much she loves Ballymun. “Every now and again you have a bit of madness but there is more good than there is bad here. There’s so much good – so many youth projects, choirs, going on. It’s a good community.”
Concern about gun violence, however, has led to leaflets being distributed to parents advising them on what to do “if violence or gunfire occurs nearby”.
The colourful two-page leaflet, published by the Ballymun Drug and Alcohol taskforce and headed “Recent events”, says: “Stay inside/move inside immediately. Bring young people indoors calmly and quickly. Lock doors where possible. Close blinds/curtains.”
Its five-point plan says people should “move away from windows and external doors” and adults should use “calm language” and tell children, “We are safe inside.”
Roisin Hickey, principal of a local primary school that distributed the leaflet on Wednesday, said: “Thankfully I would say most of the children in our school are unaware of what happened. But the parents are very conscious of it, and concerned.” She asked that the school not be named.
“Tuesday was exceptional, but it adds to the sense that outdoor play is increasingly challenging. The non-stop scooters, the interactions [drug dealing] children shouldn’t see; there are syringes, pipes.
“Where our instinct is to tell parents to get the children off screens, get them outdoors, that’s very challenging.”
Youth worker Ray Corcoran works with a cross-section of children and adolescents, some of whom he can spot from very young as “ripe for grooming” into criminality.
They can be diverted from that path, he says, but it requires investment and commitment.
“All our work is trauma-informed. We see young lads whose dads might be gone – begging in town to feed an addiction; the mother might be very vulnerable herself, might have got with a drug dealer. All that child wants is family, a sense of belonging.
“There is a huge disconnect for a young man when he thinks his only economic opportunity lies in selling crack. It’s all down to one word – poverty. That’s the root of the disconnection from opportunity.”
The Pobal deprivation index, drawing on Census 2022 data, designates the Sillogue area as “extremely disadvantaged”, with a male unemployment rate of 40 per cent. The female unemployment rate is 16 per cent; just 8 per cent of adults have a third-level education.
Coultry is marginally better off, classified as “very disadvantaged” with male unemployment at 30 per cent and female at 15 per cent. Just 12 per cent of adults have a third-level education.
Paddy Haughey, who worked at the Plough youth club in Coultry for more than 40 years, says Ballymun feels “abandoned”.
He references how Ballymun and Finglas were allocated just 2 per cent of Dublin City Council’s 2026-2028 capital spend on projects outside of housing, compared with 28 per cent allocated to the southeast of the capital.
“The drug barons are as active as ever. If there are any footloose children they are going to hook them in,” Haughey said.
“The only solution is youth work, youth clubs, and lots of them. Youth clubs are the Saviour.Ballymun’s young people deserve decent futures as much as young people in any other part of Dublin.”
