Madam, - With reference to your Editorial of June 29th, "Talking to Travellers", I find it difficult to understand how Travellers' rights extend to the provision for them of several alternative accommodations while others are allowed to remain on local authority housing lists for decades without any hope of being allocated decent places in which to live out the remainder of their lives.
I also find it difficult to understand why it is perceived to be wrong for so-called settled people to protect their dearly won homes and areas from social unrest and environmental defilement.
Along with your leading article of June 29th there was a report by Kitty Holland in which Martin Collins of Pavee Point complains that media reporting of recent events, such as large summer encampments, were "exacerbating" the problems between Travellers and the settled community.
These encampments devastate the communities in which they are arbitrarily set up and their impact on the stricken localities must be reported. It is the anarchic Traveller way of life which is the problem, not the media reporting of it.
These issues must be addressed in any realistic and responsible analysis of the issue.
But when all is said and done, it has to be asked if the Traveller way of life is feasible in this day and age. In the past it relied on the goodwill of landowners to provide free halting-sites, and the ability of a small-scale economy to employ Travellers in various part-time ways. Those days are past. We have all had to suffer, and to adjust.
An itinerant lifestyle today is an expensive one. It appears, too, that it is one which wealthy travellers are not prepared to fund entirely out of their own pockets, and one which poorer travellers expect the taxpayers of this island to fund without any input from themselves. - Yours, etc.,
M. WALSH, Dublin Road, Drogheda, Co Lough.