DUBLIN communities beset by drug dealing should be given more control, within the law, to "reduce the marketing efforts of the drug pushers and drug barons" in their own areas, the Taoiseach has said.
The majority of Dublin people did not want to see drug pushing in their neighbourhoods but neither did they wish to take the law into their own hands. Speaking at a Fine Gael seminar entitled "Ireland 2020" in Tallaght yesterday, Mr Bruton raised the drugs problem facing many communities.
"But there is not a structure of local government with powers that are local enough to deal with giving people control over their own neighbourhoods. We need to look at how we can do this by creating community groups with some form of statutory function that can manage - using mainly voluntary help - estates and flat complexes in a way that people living there have some control within the law over the way life is lived on the street and the corridors."
Responding to reports in yesterday's local Tallaght newspaper, the Echo, which said a group known as Tallaght Against Drug Dealers was planning to kill pushers, the Taoiseach said taking the law into one's own hands was completely unacceptable. There had to be a respect for law and the legal processes.
"Clearly there is a need to provide local means whereby pressure of a legal kind can be put on people like this to remove them from the scene," he said. The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Ms Liz McManus, and the Minister for Rural Development, Mr Gay Mitchell, were looking at the issue.
"I would not claim that the Government has found the right formula at this point but what we have done is identified this as a major problem and a major area where action can be taken to reduce the marketing efforts of the drug barons and the drug pushers - to deny them the sort of marketing outlets that unfortunately they have created in certain housing areas in this city and other cities," Mr Bruton added.
The problem was not simply one of Garda prevention. There must be other ways of supplementing the force. He was not suggesting that people confront armed or dangerous individuals but there was other action that community groups could take. For instance people could be given the moral support that would enable them to take the witness stand against drug dealers. It took a great deal more courage to give evidence in a trial, openly, than "to go into a dark lane with a hood over your head and shoot them ... that does not require a lot of courage at all".
It was also very important that individuals taking drugs should realise they were "wrecking their own lives and the lives of those who love them". No person taking drugs could push all responsibility for that onto the shoulders of the State.