Conditions at Cork Travellers halting site breach safety rules

Michael McCarthy, his wife Sue-Ellen and their eight children are among the more fortunate families on Spring Lane halting site in Cork city.

On one of the most overcrowded sites in the State, the family has an official bay, with electricity and running water. Surrounding the 10 bays are 24 additional households in caravans without running water and in, some cases, electricity.

But even those on official bays endure unsafe and overcrowded conditions, with mobile homes and caravans far closer together than the six-metre distance required by national fire-safety regulations for residential caravan parks.

None of the households visited by The Irish Times had smoke alarms or fire blankets – despite having been promised them, according to residents, by Cork City Council some months ago.

Extension leads

Many homes had electricity supplied via extension leads, trailing in from other units. There were overloaded sockets, and gas cylinders could be seen insecurely stored around the site.

Spring Lane, in the Blackpool area of the city, was built in the late 1980s for 10 families. As these families' children have grown, and with nowhere else to go, there are now 34 households – about 150 people, 90 of them children.

In their two-bedroom mobile home, the McCarthys share a double bed with their one-year-old son Thomas. Their five daughters, Helena (11), Katelyn (10), Alannah (seven), Analise (five) and Emily (three) share another bed, and in the next room, Michael (13) and William (nine), are also in one bed.

Shauna Freyney, her partner and three children under five share a one-bedroom caravan. The lights don't work as water has "leaked in and shorted the bulb sockets", she says. Several of the windows don't shut fully. There are three holes in the floor.

They have no toilet of their own, sharing one with other families, in a steel shed about 20 metres from their van. Their only running water is cold and is from tap on a wall 10 metres from the van. They bring electricity in with extension leads. “I have lots of worries. One is that my eldest, Lilliana, starts school in September and I am going to have to wash her in a baby-bath each morning. She is too old for that. It upsets her.

“My other is my baby, Pa (10 months). He has a serious heart condition. He is to have open heart surgery in six months. How can I bring him back to this? His doctors say our living conditions here are not good for his health.”

Arson attack

In another caravan, Martin McCarthy (27) lives alone. His wife and their two daughters returned to live with her mother after an arson attack destroyed the family’s mobile home.

He has no running water and uses a toilet in the burnt out mobile home. He has registered as homeless, but having been born and reared in Spring Lane, he wants to stay there. He says the council has refused his requests for help to purchase a new mobile home.

“I’d like an appropriate home, something proper where my daughters can stay.”

Residents continue to campaign for decent conditions and hope to work with the housing body, Respond, to redevelop the site.

Cork City Council is one of several local authorities at the end of April that had yet to submit their sites’ audit to a national review of fire safety in Traveller accommodation.

The council declined to comment to The Irish Times on conditions in Spring Lane.