CORK Corporation will seek an order to remove a 63 year old woman and her husband from a house they took over yesterday which was to be allocated to a travelling family. This follows claims that travellers were getting priority treatment from the city council and were jumping the waiting list of 1,500.
Mrs Kitty Lane said she and her husband were no longer able to climb the 42 steps to the three bedroom corporation flat they have shared for the past 20 years. "We approached the corporation about this house when it became vacant before Christmas. We are not well and this would suit us much better," she said.
But when she was told the house at 24 Popham's Road, Farranrea, had been allocated to a travelling family she decided to squat and moved in yesterday morning. "I have never broken the law before but it seems that you have to live in a caravan to qualify for a house now, she said. She would chain herself to the kitchen sink if the authorities tried to move her.
Mrs Katie O'Donoghue (57), due to move into the house this week, said she did not blame Mrs Lane for her action. "I can sympathise with her because I have had a hard life too," she said yesterday.
Mrs O'Donoghue and her extended family were living on the corporation's official halting site in Ballyvolane for the past 10 years but moved out in September when it became overcrowded. "We were paying our rent and for the electricity but they kept putting more into the site and we had to leave," she said.
Her family in six caravans moved to the Pole Field nearby in Blackpool where they lived over the winter without electricity, water or toilets. "The winter was very hard. My husband is sick, a number of my grandchildren were in hospital and I had the flu with the condition of the place and the rats," she said.
Her daughter, Mrs Breda O'Donoghue, who also lives in the Pole Field, said she applied to the corporation three years ago for houses for the six families where they could live beside one another.
"We do not want to go to Farranrea. We want to be together in a housing scheme but they are forcing us into houses in Farranrea where we know we are not wanted.
"They have offered us three houses within 100 yards of one another, but we would prefer to stay here because at least we have one another. In Farranrea we would be living among people who do not want us. We knew that would happen but the corporation would not listen to us."
Mrs Anne O'Doherty, of the Travellers' Visibility Group, said the problem was not a travellers' issue but a political one. "The Government has said that all travellers would be housed appropriately by the year 2000 but they have not come near it. Then at local level you have local representatives who will not allow travellers to be housed in their area. This is not a problem between travellers, and the settled community, this is a political problem," she said.
Assistant city manager Mr Jim O'Donovan said it was wrong to say the travellers were jumping the housing queue. They were on it for years but he added that travellers were a priority for housing in the city.
Corporation officials visited Mrs Lane and asked her to leave the house but when she refused they said they would have to appeal to the court for an injunction.