Up to 600 Travellers occupying about 105 caravans have been served with statutory notice to leave two sites in the Rathfarnham area of south Dublin.
The families, who have taken up residence on sites along the Dodder at Fairways and at Cherryfield Park, about a mile away, have been the subject of complaints from local residents.
The unit charged with providing Traveller accommodation in the South Dublin County Council area said yesterday it would never be able to deal with such an influx of Travellers, who in this case had adequate resources and, often, accommodation elsewhere in the State. The Travellers are expected to be moved on by tomorrow.
Mr Mick Fagan, head of the council's Traveller unit, said the Travellers who had moved into the area in recent weeks were on an "economic mission". He emphasised the council was not ducking its responsibility to implement the Traveller accommodation programme but was prioritising the construction of accommodation for indigenous Travellers who were genuinely in need of it.
However, the obligation in the 1998 legislation to provide transient halting bays as well as permanent sites for Travellers seemed to be "a daft policy", Mr Fagan said.
The council was not in a position, nor would it ever be in a position, to respond to such an influx as this area had seen in recent weeks. He said the Traveller accommodation issue needed to be dealt with regionally, by all the Dublin authorities in co-operation. Transient Travellers had left tonnes of rubbish on the banks of the Dodder last year, which cost £55,000 of taxpayers' money to clean up, Mr Fagan said.
"The most negative impacts are that they give off such negative PR on behalf of Travellers generally and that they make it impossible for me to go into the settled community to make the case for Travellers who are genuinely in need of accommodation. They effectively make the implementation of the Traveller accommodation programme impossible."