Ballymun residents to start drugs watch

RESIDENTS of a Ballymun tower block are beginning a "block watch" to prevent drug addicts using the building's public landings to inject and smoke heroin.

This follows a public meeting last night prompted by the arrival in recent months of up to a dozen addicts at a time who have been congregating on landings of the Thomas McDonagh tower.

Mr Sean O Cionnaith, secretary of the tower's residents' association, said in the past four months addicts had been congregating at the rubbish chutes, in the centre of the landings, some arriving at 8 a.m.

"The addicts are getting younger and are injecting quite openly. Some of the residents have been getting verbal abuse from them and they are leaving a terrible mess." That mess includes tin foil from smoking heroin, excrement and vomit, as well as the dirty syringes.

There are up to 80 children living in the tower and they see young addicts sprawled out on the landings, injecting and leaving used syringes on the ground. "Some addicts are even bringing their babies," he said.

Last night about 100 people attended the public meeting which was addressed by the residents' association and local gardai. The residents have agreed to co ordinate a campaign to try to operate a 24 hour "watch" on the public landings where addicts and pushers congregate.

The association insisted that the operation would not be "vigilante style". The new block watch will be an extension of the Neighbourhood Watch system in operation in the tower with the support of the gardai.

"We will just ask people we don't recognise where they are going and if they are going to a particular flat we will go with them just to make sure," Mr O Cionnaith said.