Aisling Bent's youngest child, eight-year-old Grant, won't sit alone in the the living room any more. "A brick came crashing through that window," she explains, sitting in an armchair by the large front window. "Robin (11) was just coming in here one evening, carrying a glass of water. It landed smash on the floor. She dropped her glass and screamed, writes Kitty Holland
Aisling now keeps the curtains drawn day and night, to "catch" any more bricks. Grant, she says, feels safer sitting in his own room now.
The separated mother and her five children, aged from eight to 18 years old, have lived on Glenshane Estate, west Tallaght, since 2000. Their house is at the edge of the estate in a desolate area on the fringes of Tallaght. The only apparent facility for the 250 houses on the estate is an open sprawl of grass opposite Aisling's house, and a small shop.
The area is one of 25 "urban centres" in the State identified as having "the greatest concentration of disadvantage". Under the Rapid programme, such areas are targeted for priority funding under the National Development Plan.
For Aisling, the harassment began in 2003 when her first car was stolen. The house was broken into a few weeks later, though nothing was taken.
"They just wrecked my bedroom," she says.
Her voice becoming a little frantic now, she lists the events of the past two years. One night the front of the house was covered in graffiti; her telephone wires were cut a few weeks later, and her television cable was severed. Two bedroom windows were smashed last year and the house is regularly pelted with eggs.
"Last November, about four in the morning, I heard a huge bang outside," Aisling recalls. "They'd set the new car on fire. Only that I had parked it in the front that day, and not down the side near the gas box, the whole house would have exploded. Can you imagine how frightened the kids were, being dragged from their beds?"
Aisling hardly sleeps any more. "My main priority is my kids," she says. "They are not living a peaceful life. Amber (13) won't come home at lunchtime any more in case I'm not here, and Grant started having mood swings caused by stress. A child his age shouldn't have stress like that."
She has had to give up work, in the customer service department of a local technology company, "because I was so worried all the time, watching my phone, terrified something was happening at home. I couldn't concentrate. It meant a big cut in income".
Aisling has sought a transfer out of the local authority house she once planned to buy. "I have gone to the gardaí, but even though they know where the trouble is coming from, they can't do anything unless they catch them in the act," she says.
Part of the reason her home is targeted, she believes, is that she is a single mother. "They know there's no man going to run out after them," she says.
Another single mother, of a five-year-old girl, living around the corner has been similarly targeted. She has had two cars vandalised and a rock thrown through her front window. She does not want to be identified. "I'd be too frightened," she says.
While we chat, a CCTV monitor linked to her television shows her car parked outside. "My ex-partner gave it to me for Christmas," she says, half-smiling. "I am so terrified living here. Of course I'm worried for my little girl. She's such a dote and I hate this. I hate this life for her."
Her eyes dampen. She too wants a transfer out of the estate but is not optimistic.
Tom O'Neill, of the Housing Unit on South Dublin County Council, says both women's applications are being looked at seriously. Those successful in their applications will be notified in May. He adds, however, that it is not council policy to transfer people because they are victims of antisocial behaviour, as to do so would not solve the problem.
"Our policy is to work with gardaí and tenants to solve, and prevent, the problem," he says. "We have interviewed 20 families involved in antisocial behaviour this year, in that area, and have had to issue eight warning letters."
Under powers conferred on every local authority under the 1997 Housing Act, if two warnings are ignored a whole household can be evicted, or individuals excluded, O'Neill says.
Antisocial behaviour is "a serious problem" on some estates, he concedes. Of the 320 applications for housing transfers his office has received so far this year, two-thirds cite antisocial behaviour as the reason for wanting to move.
IT IS BY no means just a Dublin problem. In Cork, Fianna Fáil's Billy Kelleher (TD for Cork North Central) is so concerned about antisocial behaviour that he is travelling to Leicester, England, next month to see how the problem has been reduced by 40 per cent through the use of "zoned curfews".
"I have two clinics a week and I'd say I get two or three at every clinic complaining about antisocial behaviour - and I'm just one TD," says Kelleher.
In Limerick, Fine Gael's former justice minister Michael Noonan has released survey results in the past fortnight which found that people "were far more concerned by antisocial behaviour and petty crime than by gangland crime".
Fine Gael is planning to use the issue as its next "stick" to beat the Government with. Plans are underway to launch a concerted attack on the Government's record, with billboard ads announcing that antisocial behaviour is "hurting" every community. A new website is planned - www.safestreets.ie - to which unhappy electors will be invited to contribute.
MINISTER FOR JUSTICE Michael McDowell has vowed, however, to crack down on the problem, with a controversial promise to introduce Antisocial Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). In use in Britain since 1999, ASBOs are politically popular, though dubbed "draconian" by civil libertarians. A Coalition Against ASBOs - which includes the Children's Rights Alliance, the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and Amnesty International - was formed almost as soon as McDowell's plans were announced.
Ursula Kilkelly, senior lecturer in law at University College Cork, says the effect of ASBOs in Britain has been to criminalise non-offending behaviour and thus widen the net of criminality. Referring to figures from the British government's Youth Justice Board, she says that about one-third of ASBOs were breached and that about one half of those who breached them ended up in custody.
"The number of young people in custody in Britain has increased by 10 per cent since January," Kilkelly says. "That is completely attributable to ASBOs. They are an appalling idea."
She adds that ASBOs are typically used against young people in deprived areas where there are few facilities.
Michael McDowell's Cabinet colleague, Minister for Children Brian Lenihan, has also expressed doubts, pointing out there are powers under the Children's Act, such as curfews, to deal with "petty juvenile crime".
"I'm not sure whether the particular formula that is being proposed will solve the problem," he says. "It's had a mixed, patchy effect in the United Kingdom, where it's led to a lot of youngsters being locked up."
The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights, which is looking at community policing, will come down against ASBOs when it reports before the end of this month. It will advocate schemes such as the Nenagh Community Reparation Project, which bring offenders and their victims together for counselling. Oireachtas committee member and Labour Party spokesman on justice, Joe Costello TD, is known to be enthusiastic about the project's "restorative justice" approach, which has had a success rate of 84 per cent in deterring repeat offences.
Billy Kelleher, however, sees ASBOs and curfews as a means of giving a young person a chance to "mend their ways". If applied in conjunction with support services - social workers, family support workers, juvenile liaison workers, schools - he believes they could prove beneficial. "Antisocial behaviour is a symptom of a myriad of issues," he says.
ASBOs and curfews could be a way of identifying vulnerable young people and getting support services to them - and their parents - before they get involved in more serious crime.
Asked for her view, Aisling Bent says ASBOs sound like a good idea. "But would they be enforced?" she asks. "Round here, the kids laugh at the gardaí.
"They'd be too late for my family. All I want is away from this house. Every day coming home I have knots in my stomach, dreading what might have happened. It's no way to live.
"This house is not a home. Not a home for me and my kids."