Donegal County Council's poor track record in providing Traveller accommodation is to be challenged legally. Two groups of Travelling families were ordered off council car-parks during the past week without being given any alternative place to live.
There is only one official halting site in the whole of the county. The county manager recently warned councillors that they could not go on rejecting his proposals after two planned halting sites were voted down.
The assistant county manager, Mr Liam Kelly, said he believed good progress was now being made in providing accommodation for people regarded as "indigenous" to Donegal, as four small projects around Letterkenny were going ahead.
He said, however, that the council was meeting strong resistance to building temporary halting sites. During recent months councillors rejected plans for halting sites at Letterkenny and Ballyshannon, even though the land had already been bought by the council.
Mr Kelly accepted that if councillors could not agree to a Traveller accommodation plan soon, the county manager might have to use his powers to overrule them and provide sites. But he hoped to be able to work with the council, the public and Traveller representatives to solve the problem.
There are more than 50 Travelling families living permanently in Donegal and looking for accommodation. Most of these are living on the side of the road or in unofficial halting sites where only basic sanitation services have been provided by the council. Traveller representatives say that up to 40 more families spend all the summer months in the county, generally on the side of the road.
One family has been in a car-park at Letterkenny Cathedral for 23 years, although the council is now going to house them. The sole existing site at Cullion Road in Letterkenny is also being extended, but this is the first development since the site was built nine years ago. It is estimated that about 40 Travelling families are living in houses around the county.
During the past week groups of Traveller families in Ballyshannon and Buncrana were ordered to leave council car-parks or face jail, in two Circuit Court actions taken by the county council. The court ruled that the Travellers were trespassing on council property. Proceedings have also been initiated against Travellers in Bundoran.
The solicitor acting for both groups of Travellers, Mr Paudge Dorrian, accused Donegal County Council of "racism and bigotry" and said he would go to the European Court if necessary to force the council to meet its legal obligations.
He said the council had failed repeatedly over the years to try to address the needs of Travellers.
In the High Court on Monday Mr Dorrian got leave for a judicial review against both Donegal County Council and Buncrana Urban District Council in relation to their obligations under the 1998 Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act. This legislation obliges local authorities to provide a full range of accommodation for Travellers, from temporary halting sites to houses. It has also set a deadline of next March for all local authorities to adopt Traveller accommodation plans.
Events this week outraged Travellers' representatives. Ms Siobhan McLaughin, of the Donegal Travellers Project, said that after last Friday's court ruling ordering the Travellers from the shorefront car-park in Buncrana, 10 adults and 19 children ended up staying on the side of the road in Bridgend. "They are now on the edge of a busy main road. At least in the car-park the children were safer than on a main road," she said. Ms McLaughlin said a number of councillors were using the local media to incite people against Travellers and to portray them as social misfits and deviants.
She said people were also failing to realise that there was as much diversity among Travellers as there was among any other section of society and that the general public continued to make "blanket judgments". She said the arrival in Buncrana early last week of Travellers in about 30 caravans, who worked as traders selling wooden floors, was used against the families who had been in the town since the start of the year. The Travellers in the Market Yard in Ballyshannon were given one week until next Wednesday to move out or face jail. In both cases the Travellers were moved just days before festivals were due to start in the towns. The Ballyshannon Folk Festival begins next weekend and a festival has been taking place in Buncrana this week.
In Ballyshannon, councillors accused the Travellers of causing a health hazard in the Market Yard car-park and called in an environmental health inspector. In both Ballyshannon and Buncrana, public toilets close to the car-parks were closed while the Travellers remained. They were reopened in Buncrana within days of them leaving. It has been accepted by a council official that the cost of taking legal actions against the Travellers in Ballyshannon has far exceeded the cost of providing a serviced halting site. Judges have also been reluctant to order Travellers to move on from council property because of the lack of halting sites in the county.
Mr Dorrian said he had now written to the county manager asking him to find suitable temporary halting sites for the families moved from Buncrana and Ballyshannon. He was also strongly critical of the county council's argument that the Buncrana families could return to a halting site in Derry where they had been staying, saying his clients were originally from Donegal.
"How can the county council be so arrogant and abusive that they would suggest that the remedy for them is to go back to Northern Ireland? To have their legal representative stand up in court and say that is a scandal," Mr Dorrian said.
"This is a form of ethnic cleansing or at least ethnic dilution. The way these people have been treated is most unfair and the majority of people know it is unfair," Mr Dorrian said.
Both he and a barrister taking the judicial review case are working free of charge.