LAST WEEK SAW an abundance of media attention on the Dublin central constituency due to a nail-biting race for the final seat which came down to the wire. Now, post-election, as talks begin to form the new government, it is vital that the constituency, particularly the North Inner City, continues to receive adequate attention and the recognition that the solutions to its issues lie in structural reforms at a national level.

The community is a proud community which is steeped in a rich history, but has not been without its challenges. In the 1980’s the community was deeply impacted by the heroin epidemic. The effects of that epidemic had an intergenerational impact, with many people in the community still navigating addiction and its complexities.

Many continue to face long periods before gaining access to appropriate treatments, either for their substance use or for the mental health issues which often go hand in hand with them. If you take a walk around the community, you’ll see many people forced to navigate their illness in damp laneways and other hidden away corners of the community. Many families are still losing loved ones to overdoses. At ages much below the national life expectancy.

There has been much talk of a health-led approach, but what’s needed now is a commitment to that which is enshrined in legislation through decriminalisation at a minimum, coupled with unprecedented investment in addiction and wrap-around services. For those who engage in offending behaviour which relates to their addiction, alternative sanctions to incarceration, such as restorative justice, need to be at the fore of the criminal justice response.

Imprisonment of those who sell drugs, along with those who have a problematic relationship with them, into one institution is bound to reinforce the issue. Not only does it create an impenetrable market, but also causes an additional barrier in the form of a conviction, which can impact employment and other future opportunities. There’s still largely a system that punishes an individual for relatively low-level offences they may have committed during a tumultuous period in their life. This is something that must change if we are to break cycles in the community.

Early interventions

Education has long been seen as the main escape from poverty. The idea was that by staying in school, studying hard, and performing well in exams, one could access the pathways to secure and well-paying employment. The reality is that many children in this community, face unimaginable barriers to the realisation of that truth. The idea that a child who is immersed in a dysfunctional environment daily, be that in their home or wider community, can perform as well as peers who come from less chaotic environment, with more social capital, in the same exams, is not realistic.

The children in this community are amazingly resilient and ambitious, but the education system in its current form isn’t set up to see them succeed if they face any of the issues which impact so many in the community. We tend to celebrate if a child from the community gets a place on an access programme in Trinity or another prestigious third-level institution. But in reality, while this is great, we shouldn’t settle for this. An education system which is reformed to see children from the North Inner city get into Trinity as easily as any other student in the country should be our aim.

As a result of these barriers, many young people in the community are at risk of leaving the education system early. The research tells us that this results in a massive risk factor in terms of them being groomed and exploited within the drug trade. Child criminal exploitation is still a massive issue in the community. It’s a problem which has received much and interventions, and services are reaching some young people and diverting them. But overall, if another feud started tomorrow, it’s hard to see any other outcome than a number of young people within the community easily being caught up in it. We have some pieces of legislation aimed at tackling the issue, like Fagin’s Law, but poverty is the common denominator in most of these cases, and until that is addressed at a structural level, these projects will continue to firefight and children will continue to be systematically frogmarched towards a prison cell or an early grave.

Long-term investment

None of this is to say that we haven’t had investment in the community. Overall, we have seen an increase in funding for both the youth sector and the youth justice strategy, for example, in successive budgets. This is much welcomed, and it’s inspiring to see that the state sees value in them. But these sectors were heavily hit during austerity, and the current funding is likely only getting them back to where they should have been many years ago. But we have also had a recent feud and the added impact of a pandemic which has drastically increased the amount of funding needed if they are to reach everyone who needs to be reached.

There are also several initiatives currently operating within the area which are focused on regeneration or community safety. There’s much good work being done through these initiatives, but they’re still by and large addressing symptoms as opposed to root causes. The community needs appropriate and ambitious investment in these projects, as well as ensuring they aren’t geographically limited to one part of the community. A recurring issue is that a particular estate might be impacted by a problem, especially if it’s one of the parts of the communities where there are high levels of dereliction or vacancy.

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Neglected people are often drawn to neglected places, so it’s easy to see why some spaces are impacted more than others. The response then usually involves that space being blocked off or regenerated in some way, which moves the issue to another area of the community but does little to actually resolve it in a sustainable way. If these new spaces fall outside the remit of certain schemes, it can create barriers in terms of feeding into structures or accessing funding for the necessary work to be carried out by community based projects.

I would love to suggest that the views put forward in this piece contain a profound or unique insight to the issues of the north inner city. But in reality, they’re the things figures such as the late inner city activist, Fergus McCabe, were calling for many years ago, and they’re the things the next generation of community leaders will be calling for unless they’re addressed. If we want to see positive outcomes for the community, its residents need to benefit from the new, prosperous Republic they keep hearing so much about.

Glen Kearney is a Youth Diversion Worker with a charity in Dublin.