Gardai serve Travellers in Wicklow with notice to quit site

Opinion among Travellers on how long they plan to remain in a field at Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow, was divided yesterday. Some said they would be gone by Saturday and were prepared to pay the landowner rent before leaving.

Others said they would remain in the beachside field for about "a month or two", however, adding that "it has all been fixed up with the landlord for a rent of €100 a week. He is gone off to get us electricity and water".

The Irish Times was unable to contact the landowner, former councillor Basil Phelan, yesterday but on Tuesday he refused offers of rent of up to €8,500 describing the settlement as illegal and saying he wanted the Travellers to leave.

The 13-caravan convoy with accompanying vans arrived at the field on Tuesday having been moved from a local authority car park at Greystones. On the way the Travellers had also been moved on from the Charlesland housing development on the outskirts of Greystones.

Yesterday, as gardaí arrived at the site to serve the Travellers with notice that they must again move on, just two vans and 13 caravans remained.

A Traveller woman asked that no photographs be taken of the children who were playing in the field, and she later said she did not want any photographs of the caravans or equipment as "bad Travellers might see the generators and come along and steal them".

The woman, who asked to be identified only as a Traveller spokeswoman, insisted that no damage was being done to the field.

"Every caravan has portaloos. . . Every caravan has facilities. We've not asked for money to leave. We've offered money to stay here and we buy groceries in the little shop by the pub. The woman there knows we are no trouble. We are clean people. We've even offered the landlord who was here yesterday €20 per caravan just to stay until Saturday."

Asked where the Travellers were going next, she said some would be heading back to Northern Ireland, while others would be going to a wedding in Wales.

She said the group had come together recently to travel along the east coast but although all the families were known to each another they did not always travel together and would be going their separate ways on Saturday.

Her group was from Limerick but she did not want to say which part of Limerick.

The registrations of the vehicles identified counties Limerick, Kildare and Cork, as well as Northern Ireland and Britain.

Greystones councillor Derek Mitchell (FG), who maintained he and another councillor had been physically threatened by the Travellers during a confrontation in Greystones, said he thought it was "amazing that these people can continue to behave like this because they know they cannot be sanctioned in any way".

A spokeswoman for Wicklow County Council, Lorraine Gallagher, said the matter was essentially between the gardaí and the landowner because it was private land.

"We could act at Greystones because it was amenity land, and so we did. But people don't always recognise that on private land we can't use the same procedures while the Housing Act particularly forbids us from using it when Travellers are camped on a public road."

A spokeswoman for the Garda Press Office said gardaí had served reasonable notice to quit, which expires today.