Mr McCabe, aged 71, was the lead community drug representative for decades on a range of national structures dealing with the drugs crisis.
He was the “right hand man” for Tony Gregory, the independent TD for Dublin’s north inner city who played a major role in pushing social and economic neglect and the drug crisis onto the national agenda, particularly in the 1980s, most famously in the "Gregory Deal", and 1990s.
Mr McCabe, married with three children, was later a central figure in the Inner City Organisations Network and, in turn, the CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign.
The Marino man was also heavily involved over the decades in the Neighbourhood Youth Project in the area and more recently “Young People At Risk".
ICON and CityWide were centrally involved in responding to the second heroin epidemic that devastated working-class communities in the early to mid 1990s and demanding, through street campaigns, action from the Government.
This campaign, together with the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin by the John Gilligan drug gang in June 1996, resulted in a raft of new legislation, including the setting up of the Criminal Assets Bureau, and new structures.
Source: Cormac O'Keeffe, Irish Examiner, 10th October 2020
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