No homes to go to

Nine families, including 15 children, live in caravans near a former dump in Dunsink, in Finglas, north Dublin. For 15 years they have shared one dribbling tap. They have no flushing toilets, and electricity comes from a generator they clubbed together to buy .

The extended McDonnell family, made up of these nine families and four others that have left to live in private rented accommodation, have been included in Fingal County Council’s Traveller accommodation programmes since 2004. “If we had known 15 years ago that we would still be living like this,” says Geraldine McDonnell, “I don’t know if we’d have stuck it out.”

The portable toilet cabins, which each family bought, are outside their vans; the council cleans them once a week. Although McDonnell’s van is warmed on a bitter day by a coal stove, it is uninsulated and “freezing in the mornings before the stove is lit”.

Her 24-year-old daughter, Anne-Marie Collins, lives on the site with her husband and two-year-old daughter, Kelly. “It’s very hard having to bring her out in the cold to a toilet that doesn’t flush,” says Collins.

They heat water from the single tap to make baths for the children. Once or twice a week they go to a local leisure centre and pay €6 to use the showers. They have no fridge and only a few solar lamps. The conditions, says McDonnell, make everything – keeping food fresh, cooking, keeping clean, keeping children safe – “just harder”.

The children all attend local schools, and the extended family is stable and settled. Anne-Marie Collins works and is studying at NUI Maynooth. “What we would like,” says McDonnell, “is either a group housing scheme or a serviced halting site, whichever is handier for the council.”

The council says the family was offered Traveller-specific accommodation but refused it. Geraldine McDonnell agrees that there were two offers, but she says one was on a temporary site “more hazardous” than the one in Dunsink. “We were afraid that if we took it we’d end up being left there.” The other was in an isolated area 30km away.

The county council says that it remains in regular dialogue with the McDonnells and that a proposal for their accommodation is included in Fingal County Council’s draft traveller programme for 2014-18.