A grieving mother has spoken of the pain of losing her only son to drugs after the body of her 32-year-old was discovered at a house in Enniskillen in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Caroline Higgins from Tamlaght spent years pleading with her son Robert Smyth to stop taking drugs but on Tuesday, the day his sister Rachael was due to give birth to her first child, he was laid to rest beside the church he was baptised in. It was too late.

Detectives in Enniskillen are investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.

His mother keeps playing back the events of Saturday morning in her head and says the image of two police officers standing in her living room will never leave her. It was about 2.30am on a cold morning and there was a tap on the window. Her husband Brian went to the door.

“I was coming down the stairs, I could see boots and trousers and thought they looked like something the police would wear. I thought someone had a car accident, or something has happened to Robert, something to do with drugs,” she said.

She was right. The officers informed her that Robert, whom she had only spoken to on Friday, was dead.

“It was a shock, but I knew it had something to do with drugs before they even said anything,” she said. “There was no sleeping after that, I went upstairs and lay on the bed thinking, what am I going to do now?”

“I thought it would always happen, I thought ‘I am going to bury Robert someday.’. I know he is soft, he won’t listen, the Devil is out there, there are too many people involved in drugs. But it’s the hardest job in the world, bringing up children.

“It is the hardest thing to go through, having a child taking drugs. You are always there to try and help them,” she said.

As much as it pains her to admit it she says she “always knew” this day would come after watching her son battle to stay alive at South West Acute Hospital four years ago.

“I was told to get up to the hospital, that Robert was unresponsive, and there he was all hooked up to a life support machine. There were wires coming out of him everywhere.

“I thought I was going to have to sort out a funeral then. He had taken a pile of ecstasy tablets; he was found at someone’s house. I remember thinking ‘if only you could see yourself’ so I took a photograph of him,” she said.

Caroline spent two days praying for him to regain consciousness and he did, then she showed him the photograph of him lying in that hospital bed.

“He asked me, ‘was I really almost dead, Mum?’ I said, yes, and made him look at the photograph but it didn’t make any difference,” she said.

“Robert was a drug addict,” admitted Caroline. “He was hanging out with bad company from a young age. he was young and vulnerable, he just wanted to be included. It was as if he thought ‘everybody likes me, I am taking drugs’, but the reality was they only cared about themselves, not Robert.”

She recalls her 6ft four and a half tall son as someone who was very bright as a youngster both at Lisbellaw Primary School and Enniskillen High School and who went on to enjoy a short career making desserts in a local hotel before working for a landscaping company. But it was short-lived, she says.

“When he got money, he wanted to leave home, then he got loads of friends who were only interested in what he could do for them. He bought them this and that, they had parties, he bought them food, everything,” she said. That included drugs.

“The way he and others could get drugs in Fermanagh was unbelievable. He used to say to me, ‘Mum if I wanted drugs I could get some in ten minutes’. He could have got ecstasy, cocaine, anything he wanted. He wouldn’t stop, no matter how hard we tried.”

Robert tried “numerous times” to stop taking drugs but external influences prevented him from kicking his habit, says his mother.

“He got rid of phones, he tried to shake it off more times. Sometimes the people he had been hanging out with would have even posted drugs through his letterbox.

“He got rid of their numbers, then they would have thrown their numbers through his letterbox. Other people were feeding him drugs, knowing rightly that he was hooked on them.”

When the money and drugs ran out, so too did the short-lived friendships.

“When all that was over Robert could have been on his own, who were his friends? Where were his friends? I used to say, ‘Robert you have one good friend, a best friend, and that is your mother and his sister Rachael’. He depended on us to keep him going,” she said.

Caroline will not forget the last conversation she had with her son hours before he died.

“I spoke to him on Friday. He was chatting me and asking my friend Amanda how she was doing. He was actin’ the eejit. He said ‘what do you think of my leather jacket? It really fits me, Mum?’ And this jacket he was wearing really did fit him."

Caroline believes there is a “drugs epidemic” in Fermanagh and has appealed for the authorities to act.

“They have destroyed lives and I know that I am not the only parent in Fermanagh going through this. You must be there for your children; all you can do is try and bring them up as best you can. That’s all you can do.

“There is bad company out there. It’s everywhere, it’s hard now for young children growing up here.”

She says those responsible for Robert’s death “have a lot to answer for”.

“I can say horrible things myself about those selling drugs and wrecking lives, taking away lives. But I can’t judge, we are all sinners in this world.

“It's an opportunity for them to make money and they don't care whose lives they destroy in the process."

Looking at a photograph of her “fun, loving” son, the brother of Rachael and Kirsty and stepson of Brian, Caroline remarked: “Robert was vulnerable, he was innocent all his life”.

“He was kind-hearted, he wasn’t a bad person. He didn’t do any harm to anyone but only himself, he was hurting his family, he told us not to worry.

“But we are hurting now; those responsible have taken my only son away from me and I am never going to get him back,” she said.