Instead, it has discovered a new demographic. Ireland's new generation of heroin users are younger, are coming from different backgrounds and are using heroin for different reasons. And most unusually, addiction among young girls is climbing constantly.

The growth in use of heroin by adolescent girls is alarming. In the early 1990s, female heroin addicts made up about 25% of those receiving treatment. By the end of the decade, that had increased to 40%. Since 2002, half of all clients at the Drug Treatment Centre Board in Trinity Court, Dublin have been female. And in 2005, out of 19 adolescent clients, 17 were young girls.

So why has this change occurred? A series of complex social reasons holds the answer. In the 1990s, when heroin use in Ireland was at its destructive peak, the profile of the average user was easily identifiable. Hundreds of young boys disillusioned by disadvantage drifted out of school and towards heroin . . . a drug that at the time was only beginning to earn the desperate reputation it now has.

That stereotype still holds true in some cases, but heroin users receiving treatment are now made up of older men and younger women.

This change is part of a widespread shift in the profile of young heroin users, as Dr Bobby Smyth, a child psychiatrist at the Drug Treatment Centre Board, explained.

"When I started working in addiction psychiatry in the early '90s, loads of young men who were using heroin were in relationships with girls who weren't using it. A young woman using heroin was looked down upon by men and by her female peers."

But that stigma is gone.

"The social disapproval of drunkenness in women has utterly changed, " said Smyth.

"Now it's completely acceptable for women in their 20s to binge drink and get off their heads drinking. The same thing happened over the years with heroin use. The sexist attitude that existed within the heroin-using community has diminished."

The younger age profile of female heroin addicts is firstly due to the lower age of drug users across the board, and secondly because of the culture of women dating older men, who may introduce them to the drug. The fact that they are of a different generation may also indicate that they are not overly familiar with the havoc heroin wreaks.

The net of heroin abuse is now cast wider than the familiar drug-ravaged neighbourhoods of Dublin. Heroin users are coming from all sorts of different backgrounds and many have psychological problems like depression and low self-esteem that are prompting them to use drugs as a form of self-medication.

The upsurge in use among girls is a main feature of this, and unlike previously, many begin experimenting with heroin for reasons other than social alienation or disadvantage.

"I'm seeing less young people from the stereotypical communities people would think of . . . Ballymun, the inner city. We're not seeing many of those people anymore. Now, it's cropping up in middleclass communities, " said Dr Smyth. "Fairly troubled youngsters are drifting towards drug use as a coping strategy. Psychological problems are more common amongst women of that age. . .

[so] more and more girls are presenting with increasing emotional problems that predated their heroin use."

A report by Merchant's Quay in 1999 showed further differences between male and female heroin users. For women, heroin addiction starts earlier, and then accelerates rapidly. The report found that the average female user first injects aged 17, one year younger than a male user.

Women also move quicker from smoking heroin to injecting it, on average after 14 weeks, in comparison to 24 weeks for men. The report stated "the female clients were significantly younger than their male counterparts".

The Aisling Group and Bradan Foundation in Navan, Co Meath is one centre that offers services to heroin users outside Dublin. The director of the centre, Marie Byrne, confirms that the profile of the average heroin user is indeed changing. "The age group has fallen, " she explained, mentioning that the centre has dealt with female heroin users as young as 14 years. "Some female users are going directly from smoking cannabis to smoking heroin, whereas previously, there would be an array of drugs in between."

Byrne believes that the system of rehabilitation through methadone is losing its influence, as many heroin users are also using other drugs, resilient to methadone treatment. Byrne singles out crystal meth . . . an amphetamine recently introduced to Ireland, growing as much in popularity as it is in devastation . . .

as a drug now often taken along with heroin by young women.

"The increase in female users is across the board. People have to stop saying it's from disadvantaged areas, that's so outdated. . . There are young girls dying in Ireland from using drugs and we need to change that. We can't hold that record up and say drug treatment in Ireland is a success, because it isn't."

"The gender shift is real, " continued Smyth, who recently presented research to highlight the problem. "I think females are going to outnumber males in terms of incident cases.

"A lot of these girls are going out with older male heroin users who introduce them to heroin, " he added. "Here we end up in a real bind, because they're not experiencing any other relationship that's loving. So you're asking them to get off heroin and leave the only person who cares about them, so it's twice as difficult."

The increasing number of young girls turning to heroin offers a whole new range of problems along with the damage the drug itself can do.

Prostitution is one of the main issues. Whereas previously young girls were dependent on older males for drugs . . .

especially if they were in relationships with them . . . male heroin users are now relying on their female partners for money and heroin.

An indication that the problem will continue to worsen is the fact that the only age category where women outnumber men as addicts is under 19 years. Despite the fact that the number of addicts has decreased since the '90s, there has been an increase of 6% in the proportion of adolescent female addicts receiving treatment since 2001.

Tony Geoghegan from the Merchants Quay treatment centre in Dublin believes that women present earlier for treatment because they are "more socialised into medical assistance". Conflictingly, young women are also presenting for treatment due to fears of their children being taken into care, yet some are afraid to go into treatment for that same reason.

And for women, heroin addiction is more medically problematic because they have a higher percentage of fat surrounding their muscles, making it more difficult for them to inject. As only about 10-20% of those who experiment with heroin eventually become addicted, the high number of women seeking help for addiction is perhaps as low as a tenth of the overall number actually using the drug.

The future problem lies outside the capital city. Dr Smyth believes that although the situation in Dublin has stabilised somewhat, outside of the county heroin use is growing and there's a reluctance to deal with the problem. "The thing that concerns me is that things are steadily increasing outside of Dublin. I see absolutely no evidence of a co-ordinated response."

'THEY'RE GETTING YOUNGER'

JULIE O'Toole is a recovered addict and author of Heroin, an account of her life as a drug user. She works on a voluntary basis for Victory Outreach, a Christian organisation run by former addicts. She spoke to the Sunday Tribune, despairing at the current trend of young girls turning to heroin.

"I see it every day. They're getting younger. A lot of them have boyfriends and they're out there selling their bodies.

Outreach go over to Baggot Street and a lot of them are 16, 17-year-old girls.

"When I started, it was a boy's and man's thing. For a girl to do it [take heroin], you wouldn't come across it. It was looked down on.

"But it has completely switched around. Now the fellas are with the girls because the girls are getting the money and the drugs. A lot of girls are out prostituting, the fellas have them out and they're depending on the girls now.

"It's a totally new generation taking drugs.

"I would look at it like this . . .the girls want to be in the gang, they want to be with the boys. It has changed.

You'd never see a little girl 17 or 18 out of her head before.

"Around here, there's kids running rampage, and where are the parents? They just don't care. There's a park across the road from me and at 12 o'clock at night, you hear them shouting, and you see the lighter going on and off because they're taking heroin.

"I don't think Ireland knows how bad the situation is with drugs. There's well more than the 15,000 registered addicts they say there is. They're only the people who are registered for treatment. I don't think the government knows what they're doing. They should've dealt with it in the '80s. But the government always takes the long way around. They're not proactive, they're just reactive."