It is after six o'clock outside the Square shopping centre in Tallaght, Co Dublin, and Tony Mills is turning people away from his Local Link 202. He should be taking people home to west Tallaght estates such as Belgard and Fettercairn, but on Friday, March 30th, he, along with drivers on the 50, 56A, 77 and 65B routes, stopped driving into west Tallaght at night.

"They're throwing bricks in the windows. One of my mates had 10 windows broken on one bus there recently," he said. "It's gone crazy in the last while, it's just not safe."

Ian Douglas, who drives the route suffering most attacks, the 77, agreed: "It's open season there since last month. It just went mental."

He describes incidents in which windows were kicked out from the inside and bricks were thrown through the windows, breaking them. Gardai, residents and drivers maintain that the problem lies with a "few isolated kids" but these children are regularly depriving almost 20,000 people of a bus service upon which they rely heavily.

The Square, built a decade ago to answer the urgent need for amenities, is still an oasis in a desert of poorly-serviced estates. The people in west Tallaght won't thank me for saying it, as they are fed up of negative coverage, but where they live is still very marginalised.

The smart Plaza hotel, the modern offices and new shops surrounding the Square are a booming economy away from the rows and rows of houses stretching beyond into estates with few shops and fewer facilities. For most of the people who live on these estates, the bus is still the artery of access to the services and amenities in The Square.

And this is where Dublin's bus drivers have chosen to draw the line. Seven council estates, Fettercairn, Glenshane, Brookfield, Brookview, Killinarden, Jobstown and Kiltalown, straddling an area up to five miles from the shopping centre terminus, have been left with no evening bus service five times over the last 12 months.

"It's stopping people going to work and coming home," said Ann Ruth, a resident of Jobstown. Her friend Ann Farrell, who had to go to Tallaght Hospital with a heart complaint one evening recently, said: "I had to walk two miles to the Square to get a taxi."

"And some days you just don't have the taxi fare," added another neighbour, Catherine Finnegan.

Tallaght community police Insp Pat Edgeworth lists 22 separate incidents of attacks on buses and bus drivers between March 9th and April 2nd. Most involve teenage boys throwing bricks from the side of the road as the bus travels past, though on one occasion a hammer was used on board the bus.

One of the most serious incidents occurred a fortnight ago when a group conned a driver into getting off his bus and a 15year-old started it up and then jumped out, leaving the bus to roll, unmanned, on an open green. A bus inspector managed to block the moving bus with his car.

Residents are angry, but not outraged, about losing their bus service. It is one more hardship in an area long used to life not being easy. But they are annoyed that the whole community is being punished because of the actions of a few, and that Dublin Bus management and the Garda place a responsibility on the community to sort out the problem.

Paul O'Brien, of the Kiltalown Estate Management, has attended a series of meetings of a transport forum, set up in January to tackle the problem and consisting of representatives from Dublin Bus, the drivers' unions, the residents and the Tallaght community police.

At the second of these, he said, "once again they tried to make the problem ours. We were told we have to do something. If a bank is robbed do the bank managers and their unions say the public must catch the robbers?

"It's a nonsense blaming the people of west Tallaght," he said. "The problem lies with Dublin Bus, Mary O'Rourke and John O'Donoghue, but we're not in their constituency and they don't care about us."

And it seems those who do, the Garda, are under-resourced. "The issue of Garda numbers is central to this problem," according to Fine Gael TD for Dublin South West, Mr Brian Hayes. Mr Hayes is adamant that to solve this problem, and general antisocial behaviour in the area, Tallaght needs more gardai. While the Garda does not release official policing strengths, he says there are 159 gardai in Tallaght's one station compared to 293 spread across four stations in Limerick, which has a smaller population.

TALLAGHT residents also feel Dublin Bus unions and management are using them to score points in what is essentially an internal squabble over security, particularly security cameras.

Dublin Bus claims 95 per cent of the buses serving Tallaght from the Ringsend garage have security cameras, and all the route 77 buses have them, unless they're broken. "Half the cameras don't work," said driver Ian Douglas. "We were talking about this in the canteen at lunchtime and we reckon at least 50 to 60 per cent of the cameras don't work," he said.

At the January 11th meeting, Dublin Bus management promised more cameras for the Ringsend buses. The company admitted to The Irish Times that no new cameras have been installed yet, but spokesman Joe Collins said it expects 10 cameras ordered for the Ringsend garage to be delivered within a fortnight.

Insp Edgeworth is certain that security cameras have been "very useful" in tackling the "fringe element" involved in the recent antisocial behaviour, but on the 202 bus, Tony Mills isn't convinced.

"Having cameras in or not doesn't make a difference. At the end of the day, they can throw rocks and bricks from anywhere."

Insp Edgeworth's optimism that the attacks can be solved through the policing system may be well founded in the short term, but those on the ground say eradicating antisocial behaviour in the longer term is going to take a far less patchy response. West Tallaght needs to be brought in from the margins.