Efforts to find new home for traveller family continuing

EFFORTS were continuing last night to find suitable accommodation for a traveller whose husband was shot dead earlier this month. Ms Josephine McCarthy faces possible eviction, with her nine children, from an illegal site at Sandyford Industrial Estate in Co Dublin.

Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown Council has offered bungalow accommodation to Ms McCarthy and to one other family in her extended family group at a six house scheme for travellers at Glendruid, Killiney. Four families in the extended family wanted to be accommodated together. The council had originally offered her one house in the scheme, which she turned down. Ms McCarthy left Tallaght with her six boys and three girls - aged 11 to one - after her husband John (35) was killed. A man has been charged with his murder and was remanded in custody when he appeared in Rathfarnham District Court last week.

She moved with the extended family to Furze Road by the industrial estate after being moved on from Hillcrest in Sandyford following a court action taken by residents.

On Monday, Ms McCarthy and 20 caravan owners in other parts of Sandyford industrial estate received a letter from the council warning them that they were in breach of a High Court injunction which prohibited caravans parking on the site and giving them 24 hours to leave the site.

Father Frank Murphy, a Vincentian priest who is parish priest to the travelling community in the Dublin diocese, described her situation as and "exceptional and unique tragedy".

The head of the council's housing department, Mr Ciaran Ryan, said the council was not evicting the McCarthys. They had been offered accommodation at Glendruid, which she had declined. The following week, another 20 caravans had arrived at the industrial estate. "We were obliged to take action then."

If the caravans were not moved, the council would have to go back to the courts. A number of previous cases had been brought by the industrial estate against the council over the presence of traveller families: 13 families have moved out following the notification, for fear of being fined by the courts.

Father Murphy said Ms McCarthy's father in law had died just two days before her husband was killed and Tallaght was now connected with death and so the family could not stay there. The council's original offer to house her at Glendruid was unsuitable because she would be on her own.

Ms McCarthy said yesterday at Sandyford that she wanted to stay with her family and called on the council to house the four families together.

The former chairwoman of Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown Council, Ms Olivia Mitchell, defended the council's role and denied that it had been uncompassionate and unhelpful. It had done "a lot more than most other councils", particularly as the smallest and most densely populated" county in the State.

Ms Mitchell said that for most of the last year there had been 30 families in the council's area but "in the last month the numbers swelled to 70 families and this is beyond our means".

The council had provided four halting sites and four group housing schemes for travellers and it was "unrealistic to expect us to provide accommodation on demand".