Scant sign of brighter future on city streets

IT’S hard not to despair. Plumes of choking bonfire smoke waft across council estates. Scorched black patches have consumed the green parks where children once played.

The half-burnt remains of kitchen appliances and household furniture protrude from the charred remains of some of the dozens of fires left smouldering the morning after Cork’s traditional bonfire night celebrations.

It’s mid-morning and the good and decent people of Knocknaheeny, and nearby Farranree, go about their daily lives. Retired men take dogs for a walk. Old ladies chat over garden fences. Mothers push children in buggies to the corner shop, avoiding shards of broken beer bottles. Children on school holidays stoke some of the fires.

Close to Knocknaheeny’s new town centre, litter is strewn on almost every street corner.

The people appear resigned to this damage, this devastation, the morning after bonfire night. But this year, the morning after is different.

This year, there are clear signs that the people of these proud, resilient and tight-knit communities are, like others, facing a new and devastating threat. From heroin.

It’s a growing problem everywhere – on the city’s northside and southside, in county towns like Youghal, Macroom, Ballincollig, Fermoy and Mallow, where community drugs workers are seeing more and more clients on heroin.

It’s a problem too in Kerry – in Killarney and Tralee.

But the people of Knocknaheeny and Farranree have stared the threat in the face – three young men have died in recent weeks from suspected heroin overdoses.

This morning, mourners gather in the church of St Mary’s on the Hill to bid farewell to a 24-year-old man who died just days before – heroin related.

These tragic deaths have prompted community leaders like Jonathan O’Brien to speak out.

He walks the streets he loves – where he was reared, where he and his wife are rearing their children – with his head bowed, frustrated and angry, not sure where to turn for help.

Scraps of tinfoil and a metal spoon – the tools of heroin addiction – are discarded close to one of the bonfires off Kilmore Road. He points to other worrying signs – empty tinfoil wraps of prescription medicines – and all around the signs of the constant scourge of alcohol.

“How can you expect people to live or cope when these are the conditions they have to live in,” he says, picking his way through the rubbish.

Mr O’Brien points to three council homes where it is believed drugs, including heroin, are readily available.

“The trainers tossed over the ESB wires are signs that a drugs house is in the area,” he says. “There are signals too. When the blinds are down, the drugs houses are closed for business. When the blinds are up, you can buy drugs.”

The blinds are down, but it’s early. The excesses of last night are being slept off. One of the houses has a smashed window – signs of tension in the area.

Mr O’Brien points to others houses where drugs can be consumed. He points to yet another house from which two young men were carried away in critical condition after taking heroin in recent months. They were pronounced dead in hospital later.

Next door, a young girl stands in the driveway, cradling a toddler in her arms. Used needles are often thrown over garden fences.

Mr O’Brien points to a boarded-up terraced house in Farranree which was petrol-bombed.

The young mother who lived there was addicted to heroin and ran up an estimated €40,000 drug debt. When she couldn’t pay, she was forced out by those to whom she owed money. She is believed to be living in the North. Her name is sprayed in graffiti, and scratched out, on a nearby wall.

He points to another boarded-up house near Na Piarsaigh GAA club.

The woman who lived there was forced out after a sustained campaign of threats and intimidation by another family after she complained about drug dealing nearby.

Drugs can be bought on a cul-de-sac corner just yards from the property. Most people are afraid to talk on the record. Not surprising given the response from those involved in the illegal trade.

One person was assaulted recently after complaining to the occupants of one of these so-called heroin houses about late-night parties and discarded needles in her garden.

As Mr O’Brien walks from estate to estate, a woman calls him over to complain that the party at the bonfire in front of her house went on until 5am. “They were shouting, and roaring and drinking and popping tablets,” she says.

There are signs heroin was taken too.

Mr O’Brien says he can’t understand how the young people at the bonfire, some of whom will later attend the funeral, can’t make the link.

Just then a middle-aged couple drive by in a car, the passenger window opens as the car slows.

A woman shouts encouragement to Mr O’Brien from the window: “It’s about time someone did something,” the woman says.

The encounter happens just yards from where Cork City Council is spending €60m on the Knocknaheeny regeneration project.

Hundreds of homes have been renovated over the past three years as part of a long drawn-out building project and a new town centre has been built.

A new credit union has opened, a new library has opened, and a new Barnardos-run creche has opened. It’s called Brighter Futures.

Three more housing blocks are due to be renovated in the coming months.

Welcoming the investment, Mr O’Brien still wonders if the money is being spent in the right place when so much else needs to be done. But despite the difficulties, he is hopeful that the spirit of the people, combined with a determined focus at policy level, will face the threat down.