New conurbations have also grown on northern and western outskirts where high-tech plants such as Intel

New conurbations have also grown on northern and western outskirts where high-tech plants such as Intel in Leixlip have created thousands of jobs. While not everyone is convinced of the value-for-money of these developments, there is little doubt they are changing the face of Dublin. With the help of money from Europe, Dublin has become one of the most fashionable cities of the continent.
The success story of Temple Bar – an older, forgotten area in the city centre and its transformation into the restaurant and club quarter – is well known. But elsewhere the city has also been reborn.In the Smithfield Market area, new villages have been developed with former distilleries and grain stores turned into modern working and living accommodation.

THERE WAS a time when for much of Dublin’s youth, the first opportunity to leave was the opportunity they jumped at Not any more. The deaths continue, the estates built with short-sightedness in the Sixties continue to be littered with syringes and glass from smashed up cars, while the problems spill over into the newly gentrified areas where the residents are woken at night by the sound of helicopter blades.. A new Criminal Assets Bureau targeting major dealers was set up.But as fast as the Garda act, so new dealers move in. In the early Eighties it used undercover officers whose efforts, accompanied by community action, were effective in tackling dealers who were then less careful about distancing themselves from the product.And after the1996 killing of journalist Veronica Guerin by drug dealers, a murder which prompted an international outcry, the Government poured more funds into anti-drugs measures. “[They come] from areas where there is an established black economy and where maybe the parents were involved in crime or drugs.”The Irish government has tried to deal with the Dublin’s heroin problem. A high proportion of these had begun injecting in the last six months.”You are dealing with high levels of educational disadvantage and poverty, with few having aspirations,” he said.

Two-thirds of those regularly using heroin in the city are under 25, and almost the same proportion left school at 16 or younger.Tony Geoghegan, director of the Merchants Quay Project which treats drugs users, said 900 mainly young, first-time drug users sought treatment in the city last year. A recent survey carried out by a government task force suggested that 72 per cent of heroin users were male, 83 per cent unemployed and 69 per cent lived with their parents. Their studies suggest addicts commit 85 per cent of aggravated burglaries, 82 per cent of muggings and 84 per cent of theft from cars.As with Dublin’s population, the profile of the heroin users is largely youthful. Officers based at the Garda headquarters in Dublin’s Phoenix Park believe that heroin is now responsible for 80 per cent of the city’s crime.