As Traveller families move into residential neighbourhoods, objections to housing developments for Travellers in Co Dublin and elsewhere point to ongoing mistrust, writes JAMIE SMYTHSocial Affairs Correspondent
ROWS OF well-tended graves stretch right to the top of Ardla graveyard, which nestles on the edge of the Milverton estate in Skerries. A short walk up to the summit provides stunning views of the picturesque town, with its trademark windmills, working harbour and small fleet of fishing trawlers.
“This is beautiful. You can see the Mourne mountains from here on a clear day. Why would anyone want to spoil this?” asks my guide for the day.
Many local residents are unhappy about a new housing development for Travellers that Fingal County Council has begun building on land set aside for the graveyard. Some have responded by erecting abusive signs opposite the building site. Others are threatening to disinter their loved ones from the graveyard if the housing complex is completed and the Travellers move in.
“Can you imagine having 100 Travellers living here? I don’t even have a fence around my house,” says my guide, a local who doesn’t want his name published for fear of retribution from his future Traveller neighbours.
More than 1,000 planning objections have been made to the county council about the proposed site from local people. Many of the letters focus on the legality of building on a site set aside for a graveyard, noting that the council has blocked private housing developments in the area. But quite a few of the letters reflect deep anti-Traveller sentiment.
“Have you experienced the condition they leave a campsite in on their departure? They are demolition experts,” wrote one resident.
“I have just buried my husband five weeks ago there and before the ground even settles on his grave I would strongly think of moving him elsewhere if this plan goes ahead,” wrote another local resident.
Tim Cusack, treasurer of the local residents’ association, says people are right to be fearful, given their experience of Travellers. “A group of Travellers parked illegally here four years ago and caused mayhem. They used graves as toilets and threatened children. They were dangerous,” he says.
Pavee Point, an NGO supporting Travellers’ rights, says the objections reflect an intrinsic racism against Travellers in Ireland. It highlights the results of a Behaviour and Attitudes survey commissioned by the group in 2000, which found four out of five people would not accept a Traveller as a friend, 44 per cent would not accept them in their community and 97 per cent would not accept a Traveller in their family.
An EU Agency for Fundamental Rights study published last year found Travellers and Roma were the most discriminated minorities in Europe.
“Travellers are more despised than blacks or Chinese, but the fact is very few settled people have ever met a Traveller,” says Ronnie Fay, director of Pavee Point. “The truth is: not all Travellers are saints, just like not all of the settled community are saints. Most people make up their mind about the Travellers from media coverage, which is mostly negative,” she says.
THE SITUATION ATArdla graveyard is not unique. Shortly before Christmas, a house built for Travellers by North Tipperary County Council was burnt to the ground in an arson attack designed to prevent a Traveller family, who had lived in the local neighbourhood for more than a decade, from moving in.
There have also been recent campaigns against housing developments, and individual Travellers living in rented houses in Donegal, say Traveller groups. These cases highlight the deep suspicion felt by the settled community towards Travellers. They also reflect a big increase in the number of Traveller families choosing to settle in residential areas, either in group housing schemes or standard council housing, over the past decade.
This move into residential neighbourhoods has gone hand-in-hand with a decline in the number of Travellers practising their traditional nomadic culture, whereby families move around the country to visit religious events and festivals.
Three quarters of the 8,398 Traveller families in the State currently live in some form of public or private housing, while the number of families living in caravans has slipped below 20 per cent. There are now 534 families living on unauthorised sites, a 57 per cent fall on the numbers recorded in 2000.
The move into standard housing follows a change in the law in 1998, which made it a statutory obligation for local authorities to provide suitable accommodation for Travellers. The Government has spent €372 million on Traveller accommodation between 2000 and 2008, which was enough to house or rehouse more than 2,000 Traveller families.
“There are no Traveller families living by the side of the road in Fingal today, although we do have a few unofficial sites,” says Philip Long, senior executive officer with the housing department at Fingal County Council, which is building the site at Ardla graveyard.
He says the clear preference of the 317 Traveller families living in Fingal is standard housing and group housing schemes – such as the one under construction in Skerries – rather than traditional Traveller accommodation.
“I don’t think we will build any new halting sites in the new programme ,” says Long, who lauds the success of several housing schemes recently built across the county.
FOR MARY LAWRENCEand her son Anthony, the Ardla scheme promises a new life in surroundings that will bring her closer to traditional Traveller culture than her situation at present. "My family is scattered in different rented accommodation in Balbriggan at the moment. And it's very important in our culture for us to be living together," says Lawrence, who has not travelled around the country or lived in a caravan since she was a little girl.
“We’ve been waiting for this site to be built for four years. My husband and I are getting old, and it would be a great help to have our extended family living beside us. We won’t be any trouble to anyone at Ardla,” she says.
But within the Travelling community there are concerns that the stampede into standard housing threatens Travellers' traditional nomadic culture. In its recent report Progressing the Provision of Accommodation to Facilitate Nomadism, the Irish Traveller Movement pinpoints the failure of local authorities to provide suitable transient halting sites – which enable Travellers to park their caravans temporarily when they travel around the country – as a major problem.
There are currently just two proper sites in Ireland supporting nomadism, one in Westmeath and one in Donegal, says the Irish Traveller Movement. But both of these sites are being used to provide emergency housing in caravans to Traveller families due to a shortage of accommodation. And there is little sign that local authorities are willing to provide transient sites, despite their obligation to provide a mix of accommodation for Travellers.
Just six of the 34 city and county councils have included plans for transient sites to support nomadism in the new Traveller housing programmes for 2009-2013. Local authorities claim there is no demand for the sites, while Travellers say county councils do not like them moving around and find it more difficult to manage transient sites, which have many different tenants.
“Travellers aren’t allowed in most cases to pull into normal caravan sites, and there are no transient sites available in most parts of the country. The Government also passed a new trespass law in 2002, so they can’t pull up on public ground,” says Biddy Connors of the Irish Traveller Movement. “This was a very anti-Traveller law. It’s definitely intentional that they don’t want us moving around. We won’t be able to pass our culture onto our children,” she says.
Section 24 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act made trespass on land with an object such as a caravan a criminal offence. The measure was introduced on foot of public outcry when a group of Travellers camped on the banks of Dublin’s Dodder river last year, angering local residents and necessitating an expensive clean-up operation by local authorities.
A few miles away from the controversy at Ardla graveyard, Joe Mahon is settling in to his new home at a group housing scheme for Travellers at Stockhole near Dublin airport. “I’d sooner be in a house than a caravan,” shouts Mahon over the noise caused by a bin lorry collecting rubbish.
“We used to travel around in the caravans, but we stopped about 10 years ago. There are less and less sites nowadays. There is nowhere to stop. I think the travelling days are gone.”
