WEST Tallaght residents say local drug dealers are being put out of business as the area rediscovers its community spirit.

Some dealers have promised to go to Britain, Others have undertaken to enrol in a rehabilitation programme. According to community activists, "peaceful action" by the residents against drug dealers is beginning to have an effect.

It has been a long time coming. The residents of west Tallaght have known their drug dealers for years. They live next door, opposite them, use the same shops and know their names.

But over those years a kind of helplessness took hold and the stream of drug addicts and dealers into the estates that make up Fettercairn grew steadily.

In the end it was a group of women who took action.

"We had to think of our kids," says one. "It was the thought that there was going to be another generation of addicts that made us decide to do something."

For more than a week now the residents have staged their protest in the Drumcairn, Kilcarrig and Kilmartin estates that make up the Fettercairn area.

It started small, but more and more people joined and it spread to new estates. Now the banners are up in other parts of west Tallaght and residents there are asking the Fettercairn protesters for advice.

The banners, hanging on walls and mounted on pavements, are messages painted on sheets or hardboard: "No Heroin Here", "Drug Free Zone". It is the first sign for anyone entering the area that something has changed.

The second sign is the makeshift tents on the street corners and green areas. Outside the plastic sheeting and wooden pallet constructions, the evening fires burn in barrels. Inside the tents men and women sit and watch.

The idea is to make sure everyone trying to deal in drugs knows the community is now actively against them.

The corners and green spaces which used to be busy with drug addicts gathering, and unfamiliar, cars stopping for a minute or two, are now much quieter. The main activity is when the watchers are brought tea or food, or a two hour shift ends and the next begins.

"There's not too many pushers around here," says one woman at Drumcairn, sitting on a kitchen chair under plastic sheeting dripping with rain, as her friends stack wood for the fire. "But we're out here to support the others in Kilmartin."

Over at Kilmartin some of the residents have a small caravan, while others have built a tent like a bus shelter which can hold eight or more people. When asked if they know where the drug dealers live, they nod towards particular houses.

According to a spokesman for the protesters, John Noonan, the drug dealers had begun almost to take over the area over the last 18 months.

"Houses were getting robbed, there were syringes in the back fields, and it was really a group of the women which came together said, `What are we going to do about this?'"

Tactics were decided and put into action, tentatively at first. A small group of women gathered to follow some drug buyers who had walked into the estate. The protesters' numbers grew as word of the event got around.

"The junkies started to appear - and said, `Jaysus, what's happening here?'" says Mr Noonan. The women would stand and wait as the addicts walked up to the front doors of dealers' houses.

BEFORE long the dealers were getting worried about the crowds gathering at their gateways and were telling their customers: "Get away from this door, there's nothing for you here tonight," says Mr Noonan.

By the third day, drug traffic was down to "next to nothing".

"One family of pushers has disappeared; the father sent his sons to live with their grandmother, outside the area," Mr Noonan says.

In another family, "the sons are saying they're going to England on Monday. But the odds are it won't happen because these are scumbag sons who have no respect for their parents."

Another group of dealers lives in a private house, so activists could not ask the corporation to evict them for "unsocial behaviour". However, faced with the protests the dealers - also heroin addicts - undertook to join a treatment course.

"We said, leave the keys of the house with us, we'll see it isn't vandalised in any way," says Mr Noonan. "And the house will be there for you in a couple of months."

A local drug rehabilitation course is now being run from the community centre, so known dealers who are addicts have the "release valve" option of joining it, according to Mr Noonan. The course is run by Liam Collins, a community worker.

According to Mr Collins, there were about 40 heroin addicts in the 700 houses of Fettercairn when he and his team found a doctor who would work in the area, and started their counselling and Methadone programme last July.

So far 20 addicts have been on the programme, of which seven have been made drug free, he says. Seven more have come close to coming off drugs, but have had the occasional relapse, according to Mr Collins. Another six started last week and there are 12 on the waiting list.

Mr Collins says there was little institutional support when the team started the programme, but he has been told £20,000 is coming from the Eastern Health Board, which is just as well as the bills are growing. "We're hoping to get it soon," he says.

According to Mr Collins, residents were concerned at first at the idea of a treatment centre for addicts - even one limited to helping local addicts.

"The concept of a drug addict in the minds of most people is a dirty inconsiderate scumbag. But I knew these guys growing up through the youth club. Then I saw them as the living dead, but I knew behind the addict there was a decent person."

He says the residents are now very supportive, and the programme has worked "better than my wildest dreams".

Mr Noonan is concerned that people see the new activity in west Tallaght as something which has started "from the ground up". He is unhappy at the way some have tried to focus on his Sinn Fein background or involvement with the Concerned Parents movement of the 1980s.

"The protest is community based and Liam's programme is community based," he says.

And there are signs of a community spirit and pride which were not obvious a short time ago. Some people are building rockeries on the green spaces opposite their houses, and asking the county council to supply plants for them.

Meanwhile the watch from the tents continues. No one knows how long the protests will last. "As long as it takes," the protesters say.

A community activist in central Dublin says he believes more drug addicts than usual have been gathering in Dolphin's Barn and Dublin 8 in recent days. He fears the protests in Tallaght are pushing the dealers and addicts into the city.

Mr Noonan's response is: "It's unfortunate, but the facilities should be provided to treat addicts."