PEOPLE working with drug abusers are sceptical of a republican link with recent vigil ante style attacks on suspected dealers.
But one community activist in Ballymun, Dublin, believed the IRA was trying to exploit the situation.
Among the sceptics was Mr Tony Geoghegan of the Merchant's Quay Project. He believed any involvement by members of republican organisations in activities such as guarding the entrance to estates and ether forms of "direct action" was coincidental.
It was important to remember chat some communities had set up projects to work in a positive way with drug abusers, Mr Geoghegan said. It was dangerous to demonise people as drug dealers because almost all drug abusers did some dealing. It was cheaper to buy five bags of heroin than one, so people might buy in this way to save money and then sell some on.
A person on methadone could find the entire week's welfare income absorbed by doctors' fees and prescription costs and might sell half his/her supply to get money.
But Mr Sean O Cionnaith, a Workers' Party and community activist in Ballymun, who is on the steering committee of the Neighbourhood Watch scheme for the area, believed the Provisional IRA was behind the so"called vigilante groups. Such involvement was a way of gaining a foothold.
He did not believe they would succeed as gardai had a far closer involvement with communities now than at the time of the last heroin epidemic.
Mr O Cionnaith said Garda activity was hampered by extremely long delays in getting decisions from the Director of Public Prosecutions. This meant people arrested for drug pushing could be on the streets for years before their trials came up, which led to frustration and anger.
Mr Feargal Connolly of Community Response, which works with families affected by drugs in the south inner city, said republican involvement in what was happening was coincidental. "If Sinn Fein people are involved it because they live in the area," he said. Local people were very upset by the sheer scale of the problem and he believed it had still not peaked. "The amount of young people smoking heroin phenomenal" he said.
Mr Fergus McCabe of the Inner City Organisations Network seen no evidence of republican involvement in any of the "direct action". It could happen that people with past links to the republican movement were involved in some cases but there was no evidence that the current republican movement was behind it.
Those who guarded the entrances to their areas had made it clear that they had no time for violence.