A devastating new Report from the Tallaght Drugs and Alcohol Task Force has found that local communities are experiencing a persistent wave of public order offences, intimidation, drug dealing, violence, child welfare and deprivation issues that are all related to a ‘tsunami’ of crack cocaine addiction.
The Report also found an escalation of crack cocaine houses within the areas covered by the Task Force. This was often found to involve the hostile takeover of houses in a practice known as ‘Cuckooing.’
This is where a drug gangs actively select and target a vulnerable drug user or family, take over their property and use it as a base to sell drugs and oversee forced behaviours and actions such as prostitution to settle a drug debt.
The Task Force say that the public health risks within such houses are profound and some may have young children living in them which increases exposure at an early age and the associated risk of inter-generational addiction.
The 2016 Next Generation Survey found that nearly 7,000 children under the age of 18 were affected by substance abuse in the Task Force area.
Alarmingly the number of people being treated in Task Force projects in Tallaght is reported to have doubled in the last ten years, but front-line staff believe they are only meeting 25% of the true need.
According to the Report there has been a 75% increase in drug related crime, including intimidation of women by dealers, since 2018. Despite this level of increase, Tallaght has the joint lowest number of Gardai per head of population in the Dublin region.
The Task Force believe that Garda resources are not sufficient to deal with the scale of the challenge, particularly the growth in dealing in crack cocaine, “with the Southern Division which includes Tallaght having the lowest number of gardai per head of population in the wider Dublin area.”
Senator Lynne Ruane, who launched the report, said families and communities in Tallaght are being abandoned by the Government:
“The people of Tallaght and Whitechurch and the services who support them have been pushed well beyond any acceptable level of resilience, and it is incumbent on the state to act and adequately fund this highly populated community to build capacity, to flourish and to escape the poverty levels that it experiences. You cannot read this report and ignore the relationship between poverty and addiction. The cost of a Government not funding this issue is far greater than the cost of funding it”, said Senator Ruane.
The Task Force say that the population of the Tallaght/Whitechurch area has grown significantly in the last 30 years and more than a third of people living in the area are now aged under 24:
“It is one of the most disadvantaged areas in the country. Unemployment and poverty rates are very high with 9000 people in the Task Force area living in a very disadvantaged area.”