Residents and council fail to agree on Rockville site

A meeting between Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council officials and Carrickmines residents opposed to a proposed emergency halting site, will reconvene in the morning.

Council officials met residents of Rockville Drive, a cul-de-sac of 44 houses off Glenamuck Road, for more than two hours on Wednesday without coming to agreement. The authority’s housing section plans to place 15 homeless Travellers on a one-acre site adjacent to the residents’ homes for a period of six months while they complete work on a permanent site elsewhere.

Ten members of the now homeless Travellers’ extended family died in a fire on a site on Glenamuck Road in the early hours of Saturday morning. The dead include five children and five adults.

Those left homeless are currently accommodated in hotels. However, the council is anxious to place them in longer-term accommodation before the funerals.

Though the council had told residents the temporary site could be in use for eight months, on Wednesday they gave a commitment that it would be “decommissioned within six months”. The five residents who met the officials will discuss the council’s commitments with neighbours overnight before the meeting on Thursday.

If they continue to disagree with the proposals, it is within the council’s emergency powers under the Housing Act, to force though the plan against the residents’ wishes, in order to provide emergency housing for the Traveller residents.

In a circular delivered to Rockville Drive residents on Tuesday morning, the council’s director of housing and community Tom McHugh, said: “Following the tragic fire which took place on Saturday morning I am writing to advise you of the decision made by [the] council . . . to provide a temporary, emergency halting site on the . . . lands at the end of Rockville Drive.”

He said that “in view of the emergency nature of the housing needs of the families left homeless by the fire” the housing department was using emergency powers under the Housing Act to use the site.

Permanent site identified

He said a permanent site has also been identified and work on it, which is under way, would take eight months. The emergency site would accommodate four mobile homes and two service blocks with toilets and showers “together with boundary fencing”.

“In light of the particular circumstances I am asking for your understanding, assistance and co-operation,” said Mr McHugh.

Residents however said they had not been consulted about the plans and were opposed to its being used as temporary accommodation for Travellers. They placed a blockade on the entrance to the site on Tuesday.

They said the one-acre plot was too close to their homes and there could be safety concerns for the Travellers’ children in particular, given the fact Rockville Drive is a cul-de-sac with cars and bin lorries regularly u-turning near the site entrance.

Their actions were described as “wrong” and “shameful” by Minister for the Environment, Alan Kelly, while Minister for Equality Aodhán Ó Riordáin posted a Twitter message, saying: “This disgusting behaviour is not reflective of all settled people.”

The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, however, said residents should be consulted before Traveller housing was located near them. In an interview on The Pat Kenny Show, he said:

“The funerals of these 10 people haven’t even taken place yet. Of course these things have to be dealt with but there is a procedure and a process where you must consult with local people.”

Among the homeless is a four-year-old son of Thomas Connors and his wife Sylvia, who died in the fire with three of their other children Jim (5), Christy (2) and five-month-old baby, Mary. The boy remains in intensive care in Crumlin hospital. The funerals of these five will be in Gorey, Co Wexford, next week.

The funerals of the other deceased, Tara Gilbert and her partner Willie Lynch, and their children Kelsey (4) and Jodie (9), and Willie’s brother Jimmy, will be in Bray, Co Wicklow.