Dublin’s social problems: Young people ‘feel left out and are filled with anger and anguish’

More policing resources have been allocated to Dublin following a spate of violent attacks but organisations working at local level with young people who have been caught up in criminality and antisocial behaviour believe extra investment is needed on services beyond law and order.

Patrick Gates, co-ordinator of the Young People at Risk project, has been living in Ballybough in the northeast inner city for about 40 years. While he says offenders need to be held responsible for criminality, there also needs to be a “critical understanding of the root causes” and of “how to prevent it”.

Putting extra gardaí on the streets is, he says, a “narrow and one dimensional” approach to the problem, particularly if adequate resources are not being allocated to try to “break cycles” of intergenerational deprivation.

Many children in inner city areas are, Gates says, run down from daily trauma, coming from poverty, living with parents who have drug problems or seeing addiction all around them.

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“They’re left on their own to survive. They feel left out and are filled with anger and anguish. They either find a guiding adult or drift to crime, gangs, selling drugs,” he says.

“The Garda presence needs to be part of a wider community-oriented strategy. In Ballybough, we have three times the number of young people in residential care than in any other part of the country. Only 30 per cent of families access childcare and only a few of our kids get to sit their Leaving Certificate. This wouldn’t be accepted elsewhere.”

Besides youth centres like the one he works with, Gates says more public funding should be put into schools, social services, mental health facilities and housing.

“Youth centre workers can come to represent the good adults for these kids. But they’re only scratching the surface of their needs, while there are no pathways for mental health services,” he adds. “It’s hard to retain qualified staff in the local social services with not enough resources and too high a demand. It’s like they’re always firefighting.

“Schools are under strain too. Teachers coming from outside of the area don’t have the tools to understand the complexity of these kids’ backgrounds so it will always end up in conflict. We need to ask ourselves what the means are to deal with kids creating disruption, rather than just kicking them out.”

[ ‘Unprovoked attack’ leaves garda with serious facial injuries in Dublin ]

Gates considers early intervention – such as childcare and after school projects – as key to preventing youths becoming involved in antisocial behaviour and activities.

“But housing will always remain the basics,” he adds. “So many kids in our area can’t get a safe and decent place to sleep, do their homework, have their own space. You shouldn’t [have to] couch surf or experience being kicked out from a house at that age. That’s the start of the slippery slope.”

Irene Crawley, manager of the HOPE community project in the north inner city, also says “there are not enough resources” for its daily work in trying to move parents away from drugs and addiction.

She agrees that a wider community strategy should be developed.

“More policing on the streets is good. But it shouldn’t be one or the other,” Crawley says. “After being able to access rehabilitation, people from this area should access safe and secure housing. Single mothers moving out of drugs should be able to access childcare, and so on, to go back to a productive lifestyle which families and children can benefit from.”

Crawley’s view on the need for more drug treatment services is shared by Fr Peter McVerry, who pointed out in a recent letter to The Irish Times that more than 70 per cent of those who go to prison have an addiction.

Writing after Minister for Justice Helen McEntee allocated an extra €10 million for policing in the capital this year, he said: “If we want to reduce crime, would it not be more effective to invest in treatment options than in Garda overtime?”

According to Catherine McSweeney, a former worker with the Donore Youth and Community Centre in the Liberties, having more gardaí on the beat “can be good but community guards working on a daily basis could give better results”.

“The people in the community would be willing to work with them and if kids were going to get into trouble, they’d know them and could head it off before it happens,” she adds.

McSweeney has been living in the neighbourhood for 30 years and has been a leader in the local campaigns to reopen the youth and community centre, which was damaged by a fire in June 2021.

“We used to run summer camps, drama groups, breakfast and after school clubs. There’s absolutely nothing for kids now,” she says. “We are lucky that there hasn’t been more antisocial behaviour.”

The Donore Community Drug and Alcohol Team has relocated to a neighbouring premises. But the loss of the building itself is keenly felt.*

“Money isn’t the question, as the building was covered with insurance,” says McSweeney. “There’s no will on behalf of Dublin City Council. Their executives don’t live here and at the end of the day, they drive back to their lovely suburbs.”

Other community members engaged in initiatives locally have been advancing requests to the council to rent or take over available units to start up new activities, she says, but only get “no” as an answer to their pleas. “Those buildings end up being used for something else or dismantled.”

While looking out at a wild grass field beside the crumbling community centre building, a child climbs up a rock scattered with rubbish bags.

“This is what they have to come up with now,” McSweeney says. “It would be so easy to just level these fields, give the kids a pitch to play on in summer. Today, the Liberties has the lowest amount of green space per person in the whole country.”

The area has become more and more densely populated as the housing crisis has continued,with children living in emergency accommodation in hotel rooms or two or three families cramming into the same house, she adds.

“Imagine going back from school to that, not being able to have friends over nor to have something good to do outside of the house.”

She points at Weaver Park, the only green area in the neighbourhood, where playground facilities and a skating track help to keep kids of different ages occupied and happy for a couple of hours.

“I can’t tell you where the nearest community centre is because there isn’t one,” McSweeney adds.

Dublin City Council was asked for comment on the situation in the Donore Avenue area.

Labour Party councillor Darragh Moriarty, part of the South Central Area Committee, said the council ensures all displaced community services are re-housed. However, he thinks it is a matter of “space” - rather than “services” - and that residents, “especially the youth when schools are closed”, deserve to be able to gather together.

Moriarty says community workers are sometimes denied when seeking spaces to use as properties or grounds have been earmarked by the council for renovation. Such works can take months or years to be completed, he says, and people would like to make use of those spaces in the meantime.

“Some other times empty buildings owned by the council are not rented out because they are not up to safety standards,” he adds, “but that’s just because they were left empty for too long. It’s a circle.”

* This article was amended on 30/08/23 to clarify that the Donore Community Drug and Alcohol Team has relocated rather than ceased operations due to the closure of the Donore community centre