They may be controversial, both among Travellers and settled communities, but the growing number of halting sites in Republic is leading to unprecedented changes in the State's travelling community.
Evidence of this was shown in Galway recently when the National Association for Travellers' Training Centres (NATC) held an open day in the Bishop's Field halting site at Salthill.
This site, the subject of much local objection when Galway Corporation earmarked it for Travellers after it was donated for that purpose in the early 1990s by the Bishop of Galway, Dr James McLoughlin, is now an accepted part of the environment and has six families.
The residents include 48 young people. Many of them are part of an on-site homework club funded by NATC which exists to facilitate youths from Traveller families who opt to remain within the education system.
The group is run by youth worker Ms Siobhan O'Higgins, with the help of a group of transition year students from the local Jesuit school. Ms O'Higgins works with the Traveller children, their parents and their teachers in primary and secondary schools to establish their requirements.
This includes doing homework with the 19 primary schoolchildren, explains Ms O'Higgins, as well as developmental youth work with teenagers in the site. This may involve projects or having them explore what they want to become.
The homework club is held in a tiny building on site. Much work is carried out there to help the teenagers remain at school and one of them, Ms Bridget Delaney, will sit her Junior Cert this year, the first of this group of Travellers to do so.
The building also houses a pre-school group in the morning, making seven youngsters the first of their families to benefit from pre-school education.
However, such change is not without side effects. For instance, among the teenagers girls are more likely to stay on at school and to take part in extra-curricular activities such as jazz dancing. New choices are opening up to these girls yet the culture among Travellers is for young marriages.
"So, if they opt not to marry young does that mean they are regarded as a failure in their own community? It's a question we have to ask," says Ms O'Higgins.
While the women on the site seem happy and are delighted with the education their children are receiving, many of the men feel differently. "I hate this place," said one. "My horsebox has been outside the gate all day and I can't bring it in until the corporation caretaker comes to open the barrier. Come the summer and I'll be gone."
He was referring to the barrier erected by the corporation to ensure that extra caravans are not brought into the field and to prevent Travellers from bringing in their horses. However, his wife told a different story. Being here was great for the children, she said.
The growing confidence among Travellers was seen at this year's Cuirt International Festival of Literature, held recently in Galway, in which three Travellers participated, reading their poetry in public. The three, Ms Julia Sweeney, Mr Paddy Sweeney and Ms Kathleen Sweeney, who are currently working as community workers with the Galway Travellers' Support Group, are involved in a writers' club within the group, directly by Galway-based writer Fred Johnston.