Clare to approve €28.5m Traveller housing plan

Clare County Council is set to give the go-ahead today for a €28.5 million budget to accommodate 108 Traveller families over the next four years.

The amount represents spending €265,000 on housing each Traveller family.

It is expected to end the plight of Traveller families living on the roadside in Clare without sanitary facilities.

The council's Traveller accommodation plan 2000-2004 fell short of its targets.

However, it did manage to reduce the number of Traveller families living on the roadside to 14, with expenditure at more than €12 million. At the outset of the programme, 61 Traveller families were living on the roadside.

Councillors are today expected to adopt the draft accommodation plan for 2005-2008, and a "social and affordable action plan 2004-08", which together form the blueprint for providing accommodation for Travellers over the next four years.

In the draft accommodation plan, the council has identified accommodation needs for 88 families, with 64 in immediate need, and a projected need for an additional 22 families.

The social plan puts a price tag of €28.5 million for accommodating 108 Traveller families, with 92 houses and 16 halting bays being built.

The families are to be accommodated in three centres: Ennistymon, Ennis and Shannon.

The council is to provide two emergency halting sites at Ennis and Ennistymon to help families living without sanitary facilities.

However, in adopting the draft plan, councillors are expected to reject a plea from Traveller rights organisation Pavee Point to impose a moratorium on evicting illegally-parked Travellers during the new accommodation programme.

In a submission to the council, Pavee Point calls for a halt to evictions of those Travellers already on the council's housing list.

Last year Clare was the first county where Travellers were sentenced to jail for contravening new trespass legislation.

The jail terms were overturned on appeal however, Pavee Point has told the council. "These evictions are sometimes arbitrary and unnecessary, and have implications for the possible future accommodation of those Traveller families," it says in its submission.

However, the council says it plans to implement fully the provisions of the Government's trespass legislation, adding that it is specifically the council's policy to implement rigidly the one-mile exclusion zone of illegally-parked Travellers around authorised halting sites.

The council says the implementation of the Housing Miscellaneous Provisions Act "will protect both residents in existing Traveller accommodation and other residents in the vicinity of the Traveller accommodation".

Pavee Point is also calling on the council to provide transient sites.

However, the council says it "has no proposal at this time to put a transient site in place.

"The local authorities in the midwest have made a submission to the department [Environment] that the provision of transient sites is a national issue."