Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am glad that this matter has been selected. I could have raised this issue at any stage in recent months or years but the situation in the Oliver Bond flats in the historic Liberties area, in particular, has gone absolutely buck mad. It is not the only flat complex in the area where there is open drug dealing at a level that has never been seen before. The queues of people outside certain blocks and flats show that this is organised. There are characters running up and down taking orders and delivering cash to different flats as they distribute various drugs such as crack cocaine, cocaine, heroin and e-tabs. You name it, it is available. I, members of Dublin City Council and An Garda Síochána can point to any one of the flats where there has been dealing, yet there does not seem to be any work being done or action being taken.

It is like a siege in Dolphin House. The Dolphin House community is a brilliant one. Great work is being done by the Robert Emmet Community Development Project and others, including local soccer clubs. In fairness, some supports have been provided but we are not addressing the elephant in the room, which is that children are passing these queues of people morning, noon and night. There are people queuing up in suits and high-vis jackets for their fixes. There is footage of this; I am not dreaming it up or creating the illusion that there is a problem in one block of flats. There are other blocks of flats which are very similar but the cry from the residents in the Oliver Bond flats in particular has not been heard thus far. The drug dealing is on a scale that I have not seen before, and I have been around in Dublin for many a year. I was there when Concerned Parents Against Drugs, CPAD, was at its height in the 1980s and the Coalition of Communities Against Drugs, COCAD, thereafter, when communities stood up to the drug dealers in their flat complexes and communities. That era is at an end. There is a cry from the residents, given the nature of these drug dealers and the nature of control that they are now asserting over certain areas. It is for the State to stand up to them and give the opportunities to those communities to live.

What is happening is that the children's lives, in particular, are being corrupted when they start seeing this day in and day out. When they go to school in their uniforms, they are passing people who are comatose on the stairs because they have injected, they see sexual favours being given on the same stairs, and they see shite and piss and other products of the drug dealing. They pass a queue of 20 or 30 people on their way to school and they come back and the exact same queue is there again. When they are trying to sleep at night, there is tooting of horns demanding delivery. That is happening day in and day out. The good people in that community and other communities and flat complexes where the same problem exists are leaving. They want out. They are the ones who are transferring. Questions were being asked about why people do not move into some Dublin City Council flats. That is the very reason. Why would someone move in when the next-door neighbour is strung out morning, noon and night and allows his or her flat to be used as a drug den or crack house?

That is what it is. It is exactly the way it is portrayed in those dramas we see on television. It is at that scale in certain blocks of the Oliver Bond complex at the moment. In other blocks, thankfully, it is not at that scale but there are certain blocks in which people move around when the gardaí once in a while take action.

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