Sir, - I support Cllr Richard Greene (June 17th) in his opinion that the policy currently followed in the Great Dublin area is fundamentally flawed. The policy appears to emanate from the Task Force Report on the Travelling Community 1995 which distorted the role of halting sites by deeming them permanent residences.
This was in contradiction to the earlier Report of the Review Body 1983. This Report recommended the establishment of halting sites, but strictly as temporary accommodation, pending the clearance of the housing backlog. Regrettably, local authorities in the Dublin area, not alone failed in the adequate housing of travellers but, apparently, now look on halting sites as permanent accommodation. Persisting with this approach will aggravate the situation rather than relieve it.
An addendum to the Task Force Report, subscribed to by four members, noted that there is significant evidence of less mobility of the traveller community. I support Mr Greene's view that the travelling element of their original lifestyle had died out. In recent decades travellers became immobilised in urban houses or camped on inner city/town waste ground or in suburbia.
Housing has been successful in many counties outside Dublin and should be equally successful there, with adequate understanding of travellers' needs and culture. Direct housing was practised in Mullingar since 1970 and those going onto a halting site are married children of housed families. All, without exception, have sought local authority houses.
Travellers' distinctive culture is not lost on being housed and the objective should be a speeding up of housing and phasing out of halting sites. It is 35 years since the Report of the Commission on Itinerancy 1963 and still many local authorities are not seriously dealing with travellers' housing needs. Housing is the most economical way of meeting their needs. - Yours, etc., Michael P. Flynn,
Mullingar,
Co Westmeath.