'For three years we have been sleeping and eating in the one room'

A broken toy and an abandoned child’s car seat are all that is left to indicate anyone once lived at the Beechpark Traveller group scheme on the outskirts of Ennis. Not that anyone would notice. The scheme of three houses and two caravan bays is hidden behind 9ft-high walls.

Since December the last family – David and Margaret Mongans and their two-year-old son – had been forced to leave after their bay was set on fire. Consisting of a kitchen and bathroom, it was designed to be used with a caravan for sleeping. The family had lived there despite not having a caravan.

“For three years, we have been sleeping and eating in the one room. I’m embarrassed to be living in circumstances like this,” says Mr Mongans.

Off the roadside

Beechpark was built in 2004 for €2.2 million and, despite being vacant, it is costing Clare County Council €3,000 a week because of the 24-hour security at the entrance.

The scheme is one of a number of types of accommodation built around the country since a 1998 law directed local councils to provide for Travellers’ living needs. The big push 15 years ago was to get Travellers off the roadside and more than €400 million has been spent since 2000.

Few Travellers now live on the road but the new accommodation is often built without consultation in isolated areas, with high walls and barriers, say Traveller groups.

The lack of Traveller-specific accommodation, such as halting sites or group housing for their extended families, means most Travellers live in standard housing, either provided by local councils or rented privately. In 1998 half of all Travellers lived in standard housing; today it is more than two-thirds. When the act was envisaged, there were plans for transient sites to allow Travellers to move around the country, but none exist yet. Traveller groups say this is Government policy and is killing the culture.

Beechpark shows how Traveller accommodation can go wrong. Clare County Council says anti-social behaviour by other Travellers is the reason the site is vacant. But letters to the council show local Travellers were opposed to the final plans, pleading with the council to lower the walls and not build it in a hollow far from the road.

One letter from May 2003 states: “We cannot let this site go ahead. We will not live in it. We are still waiting for your response and it is a great source of distress that the council are wasting the government’s money in a way that appears to us gravely irresponsible.”

Feuding families

Housing, such as Beechpark, is designed for extended families. But when Astrid McCarthy moved there in 2005, she says she wasn’t told who her neighbours would be. “The council won’t come out to find out who they’re moving in and if people are feuding with them,” she says.

The final straw came when her partner’s son hanged himself and barriers prevented an ambulance entering the site, she says. “They tried to resuscitate him but he was so long without oxygen,” she says. The following week the family left.

Clare County Council says when allocating housing, it “takes into account family compatibility as well as applicant housing need and the requirement to let available vacancies to address social housing need.The ambulance services have always had access to the barriers at the entrances.”

There is good Traveller accommodation and some councils go to great lengths to consult Travellers. The forum for this is the Local Authority Accommodation Consultative Committee, which each council must set up and which has councillors, Travellers, Traveller groups and council officials.

But Traveller groups say even good examples are often in isolated areas with little access to services.

Then there are the bad examples. At Oldcastle Park halting site in Clondalkin, for example, kitchen and toilet units to be used with caravans are in a severe state of disrepair, some with rat infestations. Other units have no electricity.

There are no children’s play areas and the council is installing surveillance cameras, which residents say is intrusive. “We would be happy living here if they gave us a proper way to live,” said one resident.

Hugh Hogan, a senior executive of housing in South Dublin County Council, says there are plans to modernise the site.

Traveller culture

Concerns persist that Travellers are being put into local authority houses or private rentals because of the lack of Traveller-specific alternatives. “Once they are adequately housed, there is nowhere else to go, therefore they are not getting culturally appropriate accommodation,” says Colette Spears, accommodation worker with the Irish Traveller Movement. This poses cultural problems as families are no longer able to live next to each other, visit regularly or keep animals.

In 1998 just 7 per cent of Travellers were in private rentals; in 2011 the figure was 32 per cent.As bonds are broken, there are concerns over the effects on mental health. The incidence of suicide is six times as high among the community as it is in the rest of the population.

“You are not accepted anywhere you go, no matter how dignified you might be. The racism once people know you are a Traveller is unbearable,” says Spears.