The CARP programme was developed as a community response to drug addiction in the Killinarden Parish in Tallaght, Dublin. In 1995, conservative estimates put the number of Killinarden heroin users at around 60, much higher than the Dublin average. This was to rise to 300 (IV and smokers) at the present time, a figure that appears to have stabilised. The further development of Killinarden may affect these figures.A community response to the drugs issue was fraught with problems in the 1990s as drug taking and drug culture dispersed to suburban areas from predominantly inner city areas. At the same time, the problem's visibility increased since residents would have previously made a trip to inner city areas to score. As a response, vigilantism contributed to fractures in the community and constrained the development of co-ordinated approaches. Nevertheless, the activists who were to form the CARP programme persisted in tackling the issues at local level.

The programme developed through 1996. bringing in local users originally treated in Central Dublin, to prevent "leakage" of methadone4. Although local opposition had to be won through public meetings and awareness raising, the programme settled. Adopting a harm reduction philosophy that acknowledges that drug use is unlikely to disappear, the CARP Programme evolved a specifically holistic approach, which caters for the needs of the drug user, the drug user's family and the community itself. A gradual approach to detoxification (detox) procedures combined with a tolerance or acknowledgement of the, likelihood of failure for the client has produced an apparently stable client caseload who have given up heroin and who's methadone dependence is gradually decreasing. The children of client drug users can avail of play facilities such as a Playbus, can attend local activities through Barnardos Lorien project and treatment through the Lucena Clinic.