"There is a universal agreement that the Traveller community in Ireland today should no longer be obliged to live in conditions which are reminiscent of refugee camps." So wrote Senator Mary Kelly in her preface to the Report Of The Task force on the Travelling Community, published in July 1995 in her capacity as its chairwoman.
Five years on, an estimated 1,200 Traveller families live by the side of the road, 24 per cent of the 28,000 Travellers in the State live in unserviced sites without regular refuse collection, running water, toilets, baths or electricity. We continue to oblige them to tolerate lives so harsh that most do not live beyond 50.
On every indicator used to measure disadvantage - unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, health status, infant mortality and illiteracy - Travellers fare poorly. They are discriminated against and are often dismissed as violent, dirty and drunken.
The 1991 finding of the European Parliament Committee of Inquiry on Racism and Xenophobia that our only indigenous minority is "the single most discriminated against ethnic group" in Ireland, would seem still to stand. Yet Traveller campaigners are cautiously optimistic about the future.
Fintan Farrell, co-ordinator of the Irish Travellers Movement, speaks for all Travellers to whom we spoke for this week's Citizen Traveller series, when he stresses that if approaches to the Traveller situation are not led by firm Government direction, they will be driven by public attitude.
That attitude is less than pretty, as pointed up in a survey published by the Citizen Traveller campaign this week. Among its findings were that 42 per cent of settled people had negative views of Travellers, that 44 per cent would not accept Travellers as members of their community and that 80 per cent would not want to have a Traveller as a friend.
Farrell says he is not shocked at the findings. "I do hope the settled community is shocked at the findings and that they may begin to rethink where their attitudes are coming from. It might take years to change attitudes but behaviour can be controlled through legislation and attitude changes should begin to flow from that."
Legislative milestones, such as the 1988 Housing Act which provided the first statutory recognition of Traveller-specific accommodation and the 1991 Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act are to be welcomed, says Farrell.
He describes the task force report as "the first official document saying the Traveller culture was to be valued. This freed Travellers from a definition which focused on the negative, giving relief from siege mentality. There has also been progress with employment equality legislation and equal status legislation. Crucially, though, many still live in bad conditions."
Good quality accommodation, where Travellers can feel secure, is said to be the key factor in beginning to address their needs. Until that basic issue is resolved, the community itself will not be able "to get on with life" and resolve the myriad other obstacles to their full engagement with wider society. The 1995 report recommended that 3,100 units of Traveller-specific accommodation be provided by 2000. Just 123 have been.
Father Michael MacGreil, who has worked with and written extensively on the Travelling community, says the Government and politicians "have failed the Travellers scandalously". He is also highly critical of the churches' "failure on take on the Travellers' cause" and the media's frequent implication that the actions of a few are representative of the whole community.
The requirements on local authorities under the 1998 Housing Act should bear fruit in the coming years, beginning at the end of this month. It states that by March 2000 every local authority would have to adopt a five-year programme to meet the current and projected accommodation needs of Travellers in their areas. That, however, will be the easy bit.
As local authority spokespersons up and down the State told The Irish Times, the real problems begin when it comes to identifying individual sites.
"No one wants a halting site beside them," Padraig O Mor dha, administrative officer with Fingal County Council, says. Gerry Gilroy, administrative officer with Donegal County Council, says the county had identified its Traveller accommodation needs but had not yet identified specific sites. "It's the classic NIMBY [not in my back yard] syndrome, isn't it?" he says.
Farrell says that syndrome has to be tackled head on. He cites Meath County Council as one which pressed ahead with halting sites despite widespread public opposition. Today, he says, hard ly anyone objects to the county's three well-maintained sites.
Father MacGreil hopes public hostility to Travellers is reaching its zenith and that with careful handling, this will dissipate as understanding is forged and accommodation between the two communities and integration reached. It need not be an "us and them" situation, he says.
"With their love of family and children when we are losing our emphasis on family, their absence of guile, their wonderful use of language, they have an awful lot to offer us. We should be tremendously proud of them." Their reputation for litter, alcoholism and violence may stem from some truth, "but an awful lot of their deviance is reactive. Their litter is not collected, alcohol for many dulls their pain and as for the violence, to my mind the absence of aggression is amazing. Travellers have every justifiable reason to feel frustrated. I think they must have the grace of God that they put up with it."
Further details about the Citizen Traveller campaign may be had from Citizen Traveller, 6 New Cabra Road, Dublin 7.