Paul Hansard was born in 1958 in tenements in Gardiner Street. “We had two bedrooms and a sitting room cum kitchen,” he says. “There was sixteen in the family, plus me mother and father. There was eleven girls and five boys. All the boys slept in one room, all the girls slept in the other room, and me mother and father slept in the sitting room/kitchen.

“We moved from Gardiner Street when I was six. We moved to a big house in Ballybough, it was a corporation house. I had good times in Ballybough. I went to school in St. Calices’, North Circular Road. From there I went to the Tec., North Strand. I wasn’t really that great at school. I was just a sort of middle person, you know. Just making up the numbers. But I was fairly good at Maths, English. I regard meself as fairly intelligent, but I didn’t think the teachers paid much attention, you know.

“Something happened me in the North Strand Tec. I used to be fairly quiet, a person who sat in the back-row. But from thirteen years of age I became a sort of a crazy person. I didn’t get on at Tec., so I left Tec. and started working with me brother-in-law. I was working there for the holidays first of all. It was coming up to me Group Cert., and I had no confidence in the exam. I didn’t feel I was able for it. So I sort of ran away from it.

“I started work as a messenger boy first, in a jewellers, a small manufacturer. After the holidays, I was supposed to go back and do me exam, but I was asked if I wanted to stay on and that I could get an apprenticeship. So, I was afraid of the exam, because I didn’t think I was capable of getting good results. But looking back on it now, I reckon if I had to have put me mind down I could have done very well. It’s a real sore point for me. I regret it and I’ll regret it for the rest of me life. Because it’s affecting me life from now ’till I die. But anyway, when you’re young you don’t think of these things. Life isn’t something that’s eighty years long. Life is just today.

“I worked as an apprentice jeweller. It was great. A small factory it was. There was two bosses, me brother-in-law was there as well. Everything was going fine. Then I started drinking around sixteen. It was late really, for this community, to start drinking. I mean, there was people drinking at thirteen. You know, well, like, I tried to stay away from it, but eventually I did start. I started drinking cider, and when I drank I became a very, very violent person, you know. I’ve no excuses for it, you know. I was just a fuckin’ violent bastard; very aggressive. And I started getting into trouble. I never robbed . . . well, I didn’t make a living at robbing, right. If I done something it’d be through drink. But I mean, I was very fond of fighting.”

Paul was lucky in that most people in his situation would never get an apprenticeship. There were few other opportunities in the area, except perhaps Johnson Mooney & O’Brien’s bakery. “A lot of people from this area started in the likes of Johnson, Mooney’s as van boys; thirteen years of age,” he recounts. “But when they came to sixteen years of age, they were just let go. They were no longer van boys because they were too old to be van boys. I think when they came to sixteen they would be entitled to men’s wages or more wages, or whatever. So if you left school at thirteen, you worked ‘till you were sixteen and then you were unemployed. A lot of them then joined the army. From school, vanboy, from vanboy to army, nothing else.”

But Paul didn’t take care of his lucky break. He started drinking heavily, acting wildly and getting into a lot of fights. He lost his job with the jewellers, and ended up working with his brother at scaffolding. “It was great money, hard work, but I liked it. But the building trade, it’s not a job you could rely on. Like, it’s a dead-end job, especially at the scaffolding. At the moment I’m unemployed. I suppose I could get a job back at the scaffolding sometime. But, I mean, it’s not something I’d like to be doing for the rest of me life.”

Paul remembers vividly when drugs made their entrance into his area. It was around 1979/80 and he was, “hanging around a particular pub called Kelly’s in Talbot Street. It’s blown up now, it’s gone. And all of a sudden there seemed to be drugs. They just came out of nowhere. Before long everybody you knew was using heroin. I was into drink. In a way I was lucky. Because if I wasn’t into drink I’d have been into heroin. And a lot of me friends were using heroin. And this particular pub, Kelly’s, was the main source of the drugs.

“A lot of people I knew sold from there. When I say ‘sold’, I mean sold to support their habit. They weren’t big-time pushers like. They weren’t making anything out of it, they were junkies. Kelly’s was an old pub and there was all holes in the wall, and that’s where they hid the drugs. And I was amazed. I could see the police coming on and off duty; Store Street is only a hundred yards away. And you’d see about thirty police coming on duty, and thirty police going off duty. And across the road was the main supply for heroin on the Northside. It was just fuckin’ crazy.

“The authorities seemed to turn the blind eye to it. If you don’t see it, it’s not there. It seems to me that they created an underclass and it’s acceptable for them to be junkies, to be alcoholics, to be thieves. Once they do it all in their own area. When it affects the middle class, that’s when everybody yells.

“In the early eighties, when the drugs was only taking off, it could have been stopped. But the authorities didn’t seem to give a fuck. I was amazed at how easily they could sell the drugs. But then around ‘82 a lot of middle class kids started coming in. A lot of people from Blackrock and that type of area, started using gear over here. And then there was a clamp-down. The fuckin’ police sat on them. They couldn’t move. They wiped out the Dunnes. And then groups like Concerned Parents started getting off the ground.

“So, the middle class kids were taken out of it and they were saved, if you like. And I said to meself, Jesus this is great now, the heroin is gonna be done away with, the area is gonna come back. But I think when the middle class kids were ‘saved’, everybody just said, ah fuck the rest of them. And then it seemed to be a thing of containment: contain it in that area. Once it’s not outside that area, it’s not affecting us.

“And then AIDS came on the scene. And I said to meself, at least now the kids know what affect injecting drugs has. Now, at least the kids won’t use drugs. This was around 1988. I was thinking, jaysus, at least now they’ll be worried enough not to use drugs. But it’s worse now, it’s worse than it was in 1982. And ‘82 was a fuckin’ epidemic.

“I could walk down Killarney Street, and I could have my kids with me. A thirteen-year-old would say to me: ‘Are you lookin’ for hash, man?’ I don’t answer, I just keep walking. And he’d ask me if I was deaf. But this is actually in the street. ‘Are you lookin’ for hash, man?’ Well, people would say, that’s only hash. Maybe . . . But if they can sell hash so openly what are they sellin’ deviously?

“And the cops drive up and down the street and look at them and that’s it. I know you don’t solve the problem by takin’ the little ones out because there’ll be a hundred more to follow. But they should be able to do something. I mean, if I can walk down the street and I’m asked if I want hash, what’ll they ask my kids in five years time?”

Many young people in the Inner City have no sense of hope. If asked to stop taking drugs, they would probably reply by asking, ‘why? Give me a good reason’. Paul shakes his head. “I don’t think I’d have the answer,” he responds. “It’s just that it’s a crucial stage at their life – teenagers – choices they make then affect them for the rest of their life. I don’t know. It’s just luck. If you don’t go on drugs, and you’re from around this area, you’re lucky. It’s just luck, that’s all. I’m lucky that I’m not using drugs. It’s like a roll of the dice.”

When the dice rolls wrong, the Inner City teenager gets into drugs and inevitably then gets into crime to support that habit. From despair, to heroin, to crime, to prison, to more despair, the cycle of abuse is completed. But Paul believes that the cycle will always affect more than just those who are trapped within it.

“When you wave people off, they don’t just go away. It affects society. When a woman gets her handbag snatched . . . When the crime hits them that’s when they know about it. They don’t ask ‘why?’ I don’t agree with anything like robbin’, I hate anything like that. But what I’m sayin’ is, there must be a ‘why?’ There’s a cause for everything.

“When someone from Foxrock is being brought up, they know that they’re going to end up in college. I mean, it’s an actual fact that they’ll go to college. Well, it’s an actual fact here that they’ll go to prison; that’s the difference. Young people from around here don’t see anything strange about going to prison. It’s part of their life, it’s part of their experience, it’s part of the area.

“I mean, if a middle class kid goes wrong at fifteen, he’ll be brought into line, checked. The money will sort him out. He’ll be put back in line. He’ll be given an opportunity to make his life again. If you make a mistake from a working class background, you pay for that mistake for the rest of your life.

Paul’s hopes for the future are embodied in his children. But he worries about them constantly, that they will get a proper education, that he’ll be able to buy them what they need, that they won’t get in with the wrong company, that they won’t get into crime, that they won’t get into drugs. He lives daily with the fear that his children will be trapped into the same cycle of poverty that he was. “You always look at your kid and say, will he make the same mistakes I made?” he states. “At the back of my mind anyway I always look at my kids and say, is he going to be fuckin’ me? Or will he make a better go of his life than I did?

“I have the two of them in an Irish school, they’re in Coláiste Mhuire. They’re learnin’ everything through Irish. I think it’s important for them to have the Irish language. Because, I mean, if we lose everything . . . If we’re influenced by American television, British, European . . . We’re such a small country. We need something there just to hold onto. A little bit of culture. It’s not nationalism, though. I think it’s just important to have your own identity.

“Everybody wants the best for their children. No-one wants to see their kids going to prison, and whatever, a failure. But when the authorities give up on an area, and a people, what hope has the parent? If the authorities don’t give a fuck? Are we not the kids of the state? Are we not part of the state? When the state disowns you, it’s very hard for a parent to bring up a child properly.

“If you’re unemployed, they give you unemployment assistance. But I wish they didn’t. Because there’d be a fuckin’ revolution in this country. Unemployment assistance buys off the revolution. It’s just a means of givin’ people just enough to stop them reactin’ against the system. The Albert Reynolds’ of this world, if they had their way, you’d get fuck all. But they know. Just give them enough, enough to survive on, or we’ll be fuckin’ gone. And when you get your unemployment, you don’t say, oh good now, I’m goin’ to save it up and get a deposit for a house. ‘Cause you can’t. ‘Cause you can just get food out of it. You can’t even afford a fuckin’ education for your kids.

“But if you’re workin’ and you know that this is going to be a constant job until you retire, you’ll say to yourself, now, right, I’m gonna get a deposit for a house. I’m going to buy a house. I’m going to better my situation, better my kids. Right? You know you’ve enough money. And maybe you’ll be strugglin’ with it, but you will struggle ‘cause you know you’ve somethin’ there. But being unemployed you know you’ve just enough to afford food or whatever, just the bare essentials. And you don’t give a fuck because you say, I’m fuckin’ stuck in this situation for the rest of my fuckin’ life. My kids will be in that as well.”

Hope is a scarce commodity in the Inner City. People are focused on the now, on basic survival. Most of them don’t have the time nor the energy to hope. Paul believes that those who did hope, who did think of their situation, got up and got out at the first opportunity.

“It’s like what happened in Ireland at the time of the Famine,” he states. “It’s said the best people left Ireland, and the weak stayed behind; Ireland lost its best. Well, it’s somethin’ similar in workin’ class areas. People who could just get their fingers up and climb out of the hole, they are the ones who think of the situation, and they leave behind this area.

“They may move to a workin’ class area but they move to a workin’ class area where people work. And where people are more responsible about themselves. And what they leave behind is the people who don’t think of their situation. Who, as you say, have just given up hope, and they see their lives as . . . This is my life, this is the way I live now, this is the way I’ll die. And the people who actually stop to think and who fight their way out of the hole, they leave behind apathy. They leave behind the apathetic.”

Much has been said in favour of the re-development which is happening within the Inner City at present. However, all this re-development means little to Paul. “Those developments, they mean nothin’ to the people who actually live in the area. They mean nothin’. Do you know what they’ve done? They’ve built luxury apartments in Seán MacDermott Street, just before you go onto O’Connell Street. And they’ve changed the name of the street. When the luxury block ends, it’s Seán MacDermott Street again. They actually changed the name of the fuckin’ street! That’s how much the people in the area mean to them. They’ve changed the street’s name so as they won’t be associated with the people in the area.

“And any jobs that are going, you’d be either a porter or a cleaner. (Pauses.) See, we’re only good enough to clean their dirt or open their doors for them, that’s all. I mean, people should have bigger aspirations. They should say, no, there’s more than a porter in me, or a cleaner. But then it comes back to education. And how do you get around that?

“There’s other apartments in Gardiner Street. And there’s an underground carpark. These people probably don’t even walk on Gardiner Street. That’s their prison. They gave us our prison but they also have their prison. I think it’s funny actually that they want to live in the area ‘cause they’ve such a fear of it.”

Paul sees the people who work in these new office blocks and live in these new luxury apartments as belonging to another society, the society the politicians care about. Because, as far as he’s concerned, “the political parties have turned their back on the workin’ class who haven’t got work. And I’m talkin’ about the parties of the Left and Right. I’m not just talkin’ about fuckin’ Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The Left wing parties too, they’ve given up. What happens in areas like this is that a lot of people don’t vote. It’s like what happens in America, where very few of the Black people vote. And they’ve been given up on.

“What did they say in Roddy Doyle’s book? “We’re the Blacks of Ireland.” Yeah, we are. ‘Cause a lot of the people don’t believe in the system, so they won’t vote. And the political parties are only after your vote. They’re after power and they get that power through the vote. If the people don’t vote . . . they don’t count.”

Paul finds it hard to be hopeful about ever getting a decent job; he now lives for his children. He realises that there is a danger in having too many expectations for them. That he might put too much pressure on them, not allowing them their time to play, to be children, and perhaps causing them to react against his authority and ambition.

Looking back on his own childhood he often wonders what wild thing it was that got hold of him and dragged him through years of alcoholism and violence, years when he should have been studying, should have been getting that vital education. Perhaps it was the drag of his environment? The fact that all his mates were hanging around corners, shuffling out the cold and trying to scrounge enough together for another two litres or fix. The fact that practically everyone he knew had nothing to do all day but waste their lives wasting time and getting wasted.

In any case – whatever the reasons – were it not for his wife, Anna, and an artist who has changed so many people’s lives, he’s not sure how he would have ended up. “I’d say I was about eighteen or nineteen, and I was crazy,” he recounts. “I didn’t give a fuck about anythin’ or anybody. I was a very violent person. I was always into fightin’. And then I started listenin’ to radio a lot. I used to listen to yer man, Dave Fanning. And he used to play a lot of Bob Dylan. And I thought he was fuckin’ great. And I started buying a lot of his LPs.

“He sort of made me think of people. To be responsible. He gave me a political consciousness. I got a very Left-wing slant off him. He turned me onto politics and onto peace, if you like. ‘Cause now, anythin’ violent, I wouldn’t get involved. Whereas before I didn’t give a fuck. Songs like ‘Hurricane’, I fuckin’ loved that. I learned all the songs off by heart. And the likes of Blood On The Tracks, fuckin’ brilliant that. I love that song, ‘Only A Pawn In The Game’. And that thought runs through me mind all the time. And even yesterday when I left you, that’s what was on me mind, only a pawn in the game. That sums everythin’ up. For me, anyway.”