lncome and protection: life on the lane

"He's a delinquent," says Jimmy of Kevin, a Traveller in his early 20s who describes himself as a member of the TRA - "the Travellers' Republican Army". (Neither name is real.)

"He's the ringleader," says Jimmy, who is in his late 30s and lives in the house he built on Dunsink Lane.

"We can't control them 24 hours a day," says Jimmy of the self-styled "TRA" men present. They admit they had been responsible for the burnt-out cars along the road. "There's enough cars here to do it every night until Christmas next year," says one.

They admit they had burned the house on Dunsink Observatory property, and they had plans to burn the observatory itself "by the end of the week", if the barrier at the end of the Lane were not gone by then. Why? "Because it's State-owned."

The young men threaten they will damage the nearby Elmgreen golf course, owned by Fingal County Council. That night 11 greens at the golf course are badly damaged.

The young men talk of guns. Kevin says he already has one, "for protection" - mainly for internal Traveller feuds, he adds.

A rifle could be had for as little as €500, Jimmy says. An Uzi sub-machine gun would be €2,000, but another adds they have "enough guns and loads of ammo. It better not come to that."

As the young men leave the house, an older Traveller man says: "The Travellers of today are not the same as they were 20 or 30 years ago. The young ones have been brought up in contact with criminals and are involved with the gangs of Dublin."

Jimmy speaks to his teenage son in Cant, a Traveller language, which older Travellers are now teaching to the children at school.

Across from Jimmy's house is a newly-built pre-school with its windows smashed. Anti-social elements were responsible, says Jimmy. He and the other Travellers had got rid of them.

At the end of Dunsink Lane a well-weathered travelling man says of the barrier: "For 30 years they put boulders in places to keep us out. They put that one there to keep us in."

Kathleen Stokes is the oldest Traveller living on Dunsink Lane. She spent 18 years in England, she says, with only welcome everywhere she went. But in Ireland "we are not classed as anything. I'm an old woman and I never saw such discrimination in my life."

Another senior Traveller man looks over to where gardaí sit in two white vans. "Look at them guarding the stone . Why don't they take the stone away and leave the guards?"