CAN anti poverty programmes centred on local schools help disadvantaged areas and the people who live in Tony Gregory, Independent TD for Dublin Central, has become increasingly interested in this question since attending discussions on how to overcome social exclusion and youth alienation at this year's Metropolis Conference, a forum set up over a decade ago to enable groups from major cities pool experience on these very issues. The fact that the Economic and Social Committee of the European Parliament recently concluded that youth unemployment was a potential threat to the economic and social cohesion of Europe and possibly to democracy itself is something Gregory is vividly aware of.

The TD is impressed by a lot of what he has heard recently, particularly what has been achieved by education programmes in various disadvantaged areas of New York, because Dublin has its share of such areas too, areas like Cherry Orchard and the north inner city generally which are in his own constituency.

He believes the American experience has shown that decent education provision, with a major community bias, can really help and he is impressed by what he has learned of the achievements of the Beacon Schools in New York city.

These schools stay open in the evenings and at weekends and provide a whole range of community activities and health services that extend way beyond their traditional responsibility for education.

The schools see themselves as "a vehicle for community interaction and empowerment", according to William J. Grinker, a New York city Commissioner, whose views Gregory heard at the conference. These schools are managed by the community and involve parents in policy making. Grinker spoke of one such school in one of New York city's most impoverished areas, Washington Heights. A year after it opened, he said, students were scoring significantly higher points in standard tests than those in other, similar neighbourhoods. Attendance rates were highest in the district and most of the students and their parents became involved in wider school activities.

The contrast with Dublin, says Gregory, is striking. "In 1982, Dublin Corporation made available a site in Sean MacDermott Street for a second level community college, which some local community representatives argued should be specifically geared to the needs of local children," he says. "Fourteen years later the site remains derelict.

"It could have been used as a community resource against the drug problem," he says of an area now ravaged by heroin. "A lot of young kids might just have been brought in another direction."

And, of course, there's the absence of a school in Cherry Orchard where more than one third of the inhabitants are under the age of 14. "In Cherry Orchard they have been trying for a number of years to get any sort of school into their area," he says. "They had a vision that a school could be the centre and focus of their community. In the last few months the Minister has been out there and has committed herself to a pre-school and two junior classes. That's only because of the difficulty in getting very young kids to travel.

"Regrettably," he notes, "there is still no time scale for the opening of the extremely limited education facility."

HE is also impressed by the Headstart Pre-school Programme which has been running for decades in the United States and has made a measurable, positive difference, to the lives of the children who have passed through it. Follow up studies have shown that in later life they are more likely than others to be drug free and crime free and are better able to compete in the jobs market.

"We are not getting around to anything like that here," he says, in spite of the fact that "even those cocooned by affluent life styles" can hardly have escaped noticing the many marginalised communities that now exist in Dublin with concentrations of poor families and their children.

What Headstart and other successful programmes have in common is a close involvement with families and the wider community. Gregory cites a programme launched in six US cities in 1992 to work with "high risk" 11 to 13 year olds.

"A case manager is assigned to the children and their families to develop a plan to provide tutoring, remedial work, recreation and summer training. Where there is no positive adult role model, a mentor is provided. Community police are involved in intensive anti drug and anti gang activities.

"After two years, the programme has shown enormous gains both for the 600 young people and for the communities in which they live. In the programme's second year, juvenile arrests in the project area had decreased by two thirds the rate of other poor sections of the city. School attendance and academic performance, show substantial improvement.

DOES his enthusiasm for community and education projects mean he sees these as the answer to the grave problems of deprived areas?

Not in the least, he replies. "I am not suggesting you turn Ronanstown into Foxrock by changing the type of school you have in it."

He says he is talking in the context of a situation in which very little is being done for disadvantaged areas. The least they should be able to expect, he says, is that they will have decent educational facilities and that these will be closely involved with their communities and will try out things that have worked elsewhere.

The only way to make a big impact on the massive problems of these areas, he says, "is to put in massive resources". He has little faith that that is going to happen, as he outlines the problems waiting to be tackled.

"In both Cherry Orchard and the north inner city, the people are overwhelmingly reliant on social welfare. Unemployment is more or less the norm. Heroin has destroyed the north inner city and poses a most serious threat to the children of Cherry Orchard. Most of these young people will never reach third level education."

There is an opportunity now, he says, "to benefit from the experience of the most innovative of the school based projects in the US and elsewhere, and develop our own model relevant to Irish needs".

If a determined effort was made along these lines, he asks, "how many children would be given a real chance to escape the nightmare cycle of drugs and crime?"