As a Christian society, we have been disgracefully slow in responding to the housing and accommodation needs of the travelling community. And what evidence exists would suggest that increasing affluence has made us less, rather than more, tolerant of the dispossessed, the marginalised and immigrants. In that context, the decision by the Government to produce a Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Bill is to be applauded. The legislation, which gives effect to commitments contained in "Partnership 2000" and in the Coalition's "Action Programme for the Millennium", is designed to meet the accommodation needs of travellers through a series of compulsory five-year development programmes.
That such radical action is required is beyond dispute. Recent statistics make horrifying reading. Only one in every hundred travellers in this country lives beyond the age of 65 years. Child mortality rates are incredibly high. Half of all travellers are still under 15 years of age. This latter figure is double the rate for the settled community and provides a convincing argument in favour of addressing the accommodation problem while it is still controllable. Roughly three-quarters of all traveller families within the State are provided with local authority or local authority assisted accommodation. But the number of traveller families living in squalor by the roadside, with no facilities whatsoever, amounted to 1,127 last winter. This figure had grown by 87 families since the previous survey.
The Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Bobby Molloy, has responsibility for the legislation. The Bill has passed the Seanad and is now before the Dail for its Second Stage reading. Under it, the 29 county councils and five borough corporations will be required to set up local consultative committees, with traveller representation, and to provide five-year programmes for traveller accommodation in their areas. Given the past failures of local authorities to provide adequate housing or serviced halting sites for travellers, some safeguards are built into this legislation.
Chief among them is a provision that requires county managers to adopt housing programmes where elected representatives fail to do so within the time-frame established by the Minister. To suggest that a piece of legislation can unravel the ingrained prejudices and discriminations that exist in our society in relation to the travelling community would be absurd. But it may help to undermine that shameful inheritance of bigotry and ostracism. Providing travellers with decent living conditions and treating them in a civilised fashion would represent a departure from the failures of the past. Travellers themselves have a contribution to make if this gulf of suspicion and intolerance is to be bridged. Involving their representatives in discussing, implementing and policing these accommodation programmes, and in liaising with the settled community, is a start. Self-regulation and peer pressure determine the quality of life that is enjoyed within any community. These elements also influence relations between communities. Destructive and anti-social elements, wherever they occur, must be isolated. In that regard, ordinary decent people, politicians, and Church leaders, should now give the lead in advocating tolerance and a new departure.