GARDAI in Dublin have put a 24-hour guard on an empty house in Ronanstown after a family accused by neighbours of drug-dealing was driven from its home.
Members of the family, who lived in a council house on the Harewood housing estate, are hiding in other parts of the city.
Gardai said members of the family were involved in drugs, but said the teenagers targeted by the protesters were "pathetic junkies, not big-time dealers".
The house was virtually destroyed five days ago by a gang which smashed the windows, flooded the ground floor and destroyed the electrical circuits in the building.
Anti-drug protesters said the gang had nothing to do with them, but consisted of a group of drug-users who had been sold "bad heroin" by the family.
Trouble at the estate began last Sunday night when neighbours became involved in a row with the family.
On Monday - St Patrick's night - there was another violent confrontation. One local man was treated for a head wound which required 10 stitches, and another man's ankle was broken when it was struck with an iron bar.
Neighbours and members of the Coalition of Communities Against Drugs (COCAD) placed a picket at the house this week, facing one and occasionally two gardai now posted at the building.
The family members occasionally return home to fetch belongings and are escorted through the picket by gardai.
People on the picket yesterday said they would stand outside the house "for ever" if necessary, but they were determined the family would not be allowed to return to the estate.
"Why are the gardai protecting them?" Mr Hugh McGeown of COCAD asked. "They must be informers. That's why they've been taken offside."
Local gardai dismissed the suggestion that members of the family would have any worthwhile information about serious drug-dealing.
"This lot have been picked on because they're hopeless," said one. You'd stop them now and then and they'd have maybe one deal of heroin on them.
He pointed to another house, owned by a relative of one of the city's biggest drug dealers. "I don't see the activists protesting outside that house," the garda said.
Mr McGeown said the family' which had been targeted was an important part of the drug problem in the estate.