Five year national plan for travellers unveiled

THE Government yesterday announced a five year national strategy for travellers under which 3,100 units of accommodation are to be provided.

These will include 1,200 halting sites, 900 houses and 1,000 transient halting sites.

The cost was estimated at £158 million by the task force on travellers in its initial report of January 1994. It delivered its final report in July last year, and this was followed by the setting up of an inter departmental working group.

All major local authorities, that is, the county councils and county boroughs, will be required to prepare and have adopted a five year plan for traveller accommodation in their own area, which will also be subject to periodic review. In the event of their failing to do so, the respective local authority managers are to be empowered to prepare and implement such a plan, as an executive function.

New legislation will be introduced to provide a framework for the provision of the accommodation, and a special unit is to be set up in the Department of the Environment to monitor implementation of the national strategy.

A national traveller accommodation consultative group will also be set up, and will include representatives of traveller interests, as will local traveller accommodation committees.

Responsibility for senior traveller training centres is to be transferred from the Department of Enterprise and Employment to the Department of Education, and task force recommendations are to be taken into account by the Department of Equality and Law Reform in the preparation of two new Bills on employment equality and equal status.

The Government has also made a commitment to strengthen health and education services for travellers.

It is estimated that 1,085 traveller households are still living on the roadside, while another 257 families are in temporary halting sites, many of which are without basic services.

Their infant and mortality rates are over twice those of the settled community, while few travellers participate in education.

Introducing the strategy yesterday the Minister for Equality and Law Reform, Mr Taylor, said he believed that dealing "in a direct way" with the accommodation issue and other social services is one of the most important ways of laying the groundwork for improved relations between travellers and the settled community.

The Minister for Housing and Urban Renewal, Ms Liz McManus, said the new strategy aimed to redress the travellers' present situation by "a concerted and local effort" which would tackle their accommodation problem "once and for all".

The Government's announcement was "broadly welcomed" by the Irish Traveller Movement.

However, Mr Fintan Farrell, the group's co ordinator, said it was important to realise "that these are just proposals and that nothing changes for travellers until the are translated into actions'.