Couple were fearful of swimming pool tragedy

A COUPLE living in Sandyford, Co Dublin, installed a listening device in their garden so they could know when traveller children from a nearby camp had come to use their swimming pool.

Mr Joseph Haughton, a retired Trinity College professor, and his wife, Helen, of Rockspring, Sandyford, were afraid one of the children coming into their garden to use the pool might have an accident and drown.

They were also concerned at the damage the children were doing to their vegetables and fruit trees.

"We are so tired," said Mrs Haughton. "We are, really, on duty the whole day, keeping watch. We're Quakers, and last Sunday I didn't go to service. It has been going on for 10 days."

A month ago a large number of traveller families camped in an adjoining field, on a site which includes the former home of retired High Court judge, Mr Rory O'Hanlon.

Mr O'Hanlon moved around 15 months ago, and developers now want to build on the site. The developers, Kypan Ltd and Onwit Ltd, have a High Court injunction barring the travellers from staying in the field, but the families have not yet moved.

On Monday the court heard an affidavit from Mrs Haughton, as part of the case taken by the developers, and the injunction was extended to her property.

Mrs Haughton told The Irish Times there had been no difficulties with the travellers until she and her husband took a short break. "I suppose they explored the garden and discovered the pool."

She went on. "Right at the beginning of the trouble two men came in. They had heard about the pool and said they wanted to swim. I asked them to leave, and they just stood there. I am not easily frightened and I didn't honestly feel they would do me any harm. In the end I picked up my spade and threatened them."

The men left and did not return. However, boys continued to come into her garden, damaging it and using her pool. "We don't let our grandchildren use it unsupervised. You wouldn't know what would happen with children unsupervised."

The pool is small and narrow, and four feet six inches at its deepest. The garden is surrounded by a fence, bushes and trees, but the fence between the garden and the field was broken in one corner.

The couple made an arrangement with the teenage boys that they would use the pool at 7 p.m. each evening, when they could be supervised. But that did not work out. "A few of them made a mess of the whole thing."

The couple had extended their intercom so they could hear noises in their garden over the system. "On Monday we heard some noises around eight in the evening. When we went out we found a boy, all by him self, there in the middle of the pool, under the plastic cover we had put over it.

"It was the deaf and dumb boy and he could have been drowned in minutes, and who would have been to blame?"

The site where 30 or more caravans are parked is a large sloping field, facing the Three Rock mountain. Yesterday 20 or 30 horses and foals were grazing, or lying in the long warm grass. Rubbish was strewn around the field.

"Everybody will be gone out of here by Monday or Tuesday," said Mr Martin Condon, one of the travellers. They were aware from the media that an injunction had been granted against their staying in the field.

The children had been told not to return to the Haughtons' garden, he said. "We'll go out on the road. The council have no place to put us. But the side of the road is dangerous."