Council housing is cold comfort for Traveller families in Bray

Elizabeth Cash, her partner John Moorehouse and their two youngest children, Annie (9) and Bridget (5), share a bed in the kitchen of their two-room home.

“Annie sleeps between us and Bridgie is at our feet,” Cash says. “We can’t get much sleep, any of us. The children are tired going to school.“

Less than a metre separates the bed from the counter, kitchen sink, cooker and fridge.

There is no space for a table, while the lino on the floor is so worn concrete can be seen through it.

A shower-room, directly off the kitchen, has black soot-like material scarring the walls, ceiling and sills, which Cash says is caused by carbon monoxide.

There are broken tiles and the shower does not work.

Clothes are piled on the bathroom floor as the only storage space is a hot press. A mattress leaning against the wall is brought out into the kitchen at night, for Jimmy (13) to sleep at the foot of their bed.

There is one electric heater and the house is “freezing even when it’s nice outside”, Cash says.

They pay €26 rent and €32.45 for electricity weekly to Wicklow County Council.

There are three Moorehouse households on the site, which is down a dirt road off the N11 near Bray, Co Wicklow.

Known as Silverbridge, it consists of four hut-like stone houses, two of which are boarded up, and three trailers, fenced off from the river Dargle.

Health and safety

The family moved on to the site in 2009 after it became vacant, when another family who had been living there, was accommodated elsewhere.

Having been living by the side of the road in Kilmacanogue, the Moorehouses were "delighted" when the council allowed them to stay.

However, conditions have deteriorated over the seven years, and they now fear for their health and safety there.

Moorehouse's brother James lives in the second "open" dwelling, with his partner Emma Murphy and two of their children.

Emma and Megan (9) share a bed – made of two mattresses on top of each other – in the kitchen, while James and Jimmy (12) stay in an adjacent trailer.

They have two older sons, Kyle (15) and Patrick (16), who stay with Emma’s mother.

“We’d love to have them live here with us but there just isn’t space. As it is, we eat our dinner sitting on the bed. The children do their homework sitting on the bed,” says Moorehouse.

Their shower-room is scarred with the black soot-like substance, the toilet leaks, paintwork is badly damaged and rats have eaten into ducting for the tumble-dryer which can no longer be used.

“We have rat-traps under all the kitchen presses, and on top. They come in from the river and you can hear them under the presses at night.”

‘Full refurbishment’

None of the light-fittings has a bulb because, says Moorehouse, they “keep blowing . . . like the electricity is tripping”.

They also pay €26 in rent and €32.45 for electricity and have asked the council to improve conditions.

“For two years now they have been saying they’ll do something, but we hear nothing back,” he says.

The men’s father Jimmy (79) lives in a trailer, a loan for which he pays off with €40 a week to the council.

Asked about getting work and finding somewhere better to live, Moorehouse says he has tried.

“No one comes back to me. Sure who’d give me a job, with this address? No one wants to give a Traveller a job. There’s no way of getting a job if you’re a Traveller,” he says.

“We’re trying to keep the kids in school so they will get an education. I want the kids to be educated, but the kids need space. It’s not fair on them living like this. They have no privacy, nowhere even to do their homework.”

According to Wicklow County Council’s Traveller Accommodation Programme 2014 - 2018: “It has long been an objective within the plan to carry out a major refurbishment and upgrade of Silverbridge . . . A preliminary submission for funding for both the refurbishment and pedestrian access route was made to the Department [of the Environment] during 2013 and more detailed drawings and costings will be submitted as requested by the department.”

A spokesman for the council said: “Following extensive consultation with the residents of Silverbridge . . . we have prepared plans for a full refurbishment and will shortly be progressing to part 8 planning consultation.”