Protesters remind Dail of drugs crisis

DUBLIN anti drugs campaigners picketed Dail Eireann yesterday afternoon to highlight the problem in communities throughout the city.

The organisers, the Dublin CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign, said the protest was a reminder to the reconvened Dail that their communities were still in crisis. But it also sought to highlight the need for an all party approach to drugs, to prevent the issue becoming a political football in this year's general election.

The protesters had a meeting with the Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, and were joined in the course of the two hour vigil by politicians of all parties.

The banners displayed included one asking for an end to "Garda harassment" and the organisers said they planned to hold a conference in March to discuss the issue of policing. The Garda would be invited to attend, they said.

Members of the Irish Republican Socialist Party were asked to remove their party posters from the protest, but refused. "They're entitled to join the protest, and we're not going to move them, but we're trying to keep party politics out of it," the campaign chairman, Mr Fergus McCabe, said.

The protest also marked the start of what the organisers said would be a "memorial project" commemorating those who have died in Dublin because of drugs.

Placards bearing the names and photographs of victims were displayed along with stars, each representing a person who has died from drugs in the north inner city, taken from a tree erected before Christmas at Killarney Street.

Wreaths left at the tree were also displayed. A spokesman said families had been asked to bring photographs of dead relatives and friends so victims of the "heroin plague" would no longer be faceless to TDs who were unaware of the extent of devastation caused by drugs.