THE initial Garda investigations into the killing on May 10th of the drug addict and AIDS sufferer, Josey Dwyer, indicate that local republicans in the Dublin south city area played a leading role in the activity leading to his death.
Since the Garda investigation began, there have been at least two instances of intimidation of potential witnesses. In the first a man was told his wife and children would be killed if he implicated any republicans, gardai say.
In the second incident, a gun was pointed at the head of man driving a car in Cork Street last week. Gardai believe this was part "of the intimidation arising from the Dwyer killing.
A large number of people have been implicated in the killing but there is uncertainty about whether he gardai will be able to convince witnesses to give evidence in court. The beating to death of Dwyer, who weighed just over six stone, marks a return to vigilante activity in Dublin by republicans in south inner Dublin.
The Concerned Parents Against Drugs movement ceased in the mid 1980s. Ironically, one of the reasons for the collapse of the movement given by a former leading activist, who is from the area but was not involved in the IRA or Sinn Fein, was that the movement had begun picking on heroin addicts and was not having any impact on the major drug traffickers in Dublin.
Republican involvement in vigilante activity is said to be most pronounced in south inner Dublin, where Dwyer was killed in Dolphin's Barn on the South Circular Road. Local gardai said yesterday they suspect the IRA is trying to drive out all the local criminals and drag dealers.
Gardai in Kevin Street, which covers some of the inner city areas worst afflicted by drugs, say there is republican direction behind attacks and other activity which could be broadly described as vigilantism.
A major heroin dealer in the south inner city, a violent martial arts expert, disappeared suddenly a month ago, leaving behind what is believed to have been one of the most lucrative heroin networks in Dublin. His "business" was based around Dolphin's Barn, although he lived in a comfortable suburb in Glasnevin on the north side of the city. He is understood to have taken his illegal earnings with him and bought a small legitimate business in London.
There are strong suspicions that he was beginning to fear he would be killed by the IRA. His name appeared on a list circulated by a group claiming to be vigilantes operating in south Dublin in February. Gerard Lee, another of the 40 or so criminals named on the list, was shot dead in March but gardai are adamant his death was a result of a dispute with other criminals.
Another south Dublin man, Martin Foley, was shot and injured in two assassination attempts in December and February and republicans are suspected of being responsible. On February 15th, another south inner Dublin man was shot and injured in a public house in James's Street by two men armed with handguns.
The gunmen threw their balaclava masks and guns into a garden nearby and, according to local sources, one of the gunmen was identified as a local republican.
There is said to be an amount of republican involvement in some actions in Tallaght, but most of the vigilante activity there is based around local community groups. Gardai there told The Irish Times there was sympathy for the actions of the local community groups as Garda resources were not adequate to prevent the ingress of drugs into the area.
There was also a great deal of concern about young people being supplied heroin and other drugs.
The gardai regarded most of the Tallaght vigilantes as respectable and well meaning local adults. They reported little evidence of republican involvement in other vigilante actions around the city in the recent past. The only other location of IRA involvement in vigilantism in the Republic was in Kerry where the local IRA leader is suspected of having ordered a number of acts of intimidation and arson against property belonging to local people.
There was some suspicion about IRA involvement in some of the assassinations of Dublin criminals in the past year but there are differences of opinion among gardai on this point.
A number of the killings are clearly a result of inter gang rivalry or, in at least one case, a family dispute. The number of these gangland killings has also risen in proportion to the rise in the number of firearms available to criminals in Dublin - there have been 11 so called gangland killings in less than a year.
There is also competition between rival gangs. Two killings, that of William Corbally (45), who is believed to have been beaten to death and buried in a secret grave in Baldonnell on February 26th last, and the shooting dead of David Weafer (31), in Finglas last year are attributed to one drug dealer based in Blanchardstown.
This criminal's rise has been surrounded by a considerable amount of violence. It has also coincided with the decline in fortunes of Dublin's main heroin importer, a man in his 40s from Ballyfermot with an apartment in Ballsbridge.
The IRA does not have the level of support in working class areas of Dublin that it enjoys north of the Border where it has been heavily involved in an assassination campaign against suspected drug dealers. The IRA has shot dead eight men who were suspected of involvement in the drugs trade in Northern Ireland since 1992, six of them in 1995.
The insinuation by republicans in Belfast earlier this week that drug dealers in the North were arming themselves to attack republicans may be a form of justification in advance for further attacks on suspected traffickers.