It has been a bad year for improving relations between Travellers and the rest of the community. In the first of a series of articles to mark Citizen Traveller Week, Kathy Sheridan examines the fallout over controversies such as that surrounding the illegal Traveller site last year by the Dodder river in Dublin
It is like two tribes who speak different languages. Each feels woefully wrong-footed, misrepresented and misunderstood. "Whataboutery" is rife and is triggered at will.
Settled person: "What about your disgraceful dumping at the Dodder? Who would agree to a halting site after that?"
Traveller person: "What about the dumping of hospital waste in Wicklow? You're talking millions to clear it up."
SP: "What about Travellers blackmailing people for 'goodbye money' last year?"
TP: "What about the 'hello money' politicians have been getting in brown envelopes for decades?"
SP: "What about your wealthy traders flouting the planning laws and camping anywhere they want?"
TP: "What about that report that showed 200 unauthorised developments by settled people in Donegal alone?"
And so it goes, but the proposition that one side is as bad as the other is neither constructive nor helpful for a tiny, marginalised group desperately in need of some positive PR.
It has been a bad PR year for Travellers.
While the Dodder was the nadir, the airwaves were burning about the despoliation of the GAA pitch at Ballyboden, about blackmailing of businesses, about slash-hooks at funerals and bloody fist fights for money.
The Traveller mantra is that all should not be smeared with the sins of a few, but the perception is that they are slow to condemn their own.
"I wouldn't deny for a moment that some Travellers behave very badly," says Catherine Joyce of the Irish Traveller Movement. It condemns outright what happened on the Dodder. Words like "shame" and "embarrassment" come up repeatedly.
As one of the first to move a caravan to the Dodder last year after attacks elsewhere, Mary O'Rourke saw events in close-up.
"Those people made life a lot worse for me. Because of the things they did, I was ashamed to say that I was living here and I'm still ashamed to say it," she said last week, though still mired there amid muck and rats.
"But if something happens on a street with settled people, you don't blame the whole street for it, do you?"
Damien Peelo from the Tallaght Travellers Community Development Project condemned the Ballyboden despoliation at the time as a "disgrace" and said that discussions had taken place with the council to clear away the debris with the co-operation and financial assistance of Travellers.
All very fine, but where the friction starts is when such voices equivocate, usually because large groupings mask disparate elements within.
Some in Ballyboden had already begun legal action to highlight their accommodation needs, said Peelo then, and this would continue - which to some enraged observers sounded very like conferring a degree of legitimacy on their behaviour.
There was never a consensus over the composition of the Travellers at the Dodder, with one side arguing that they were traders with permanent homes elsewhere and the other that at least 30 per cent were in need of accommodation.
David Joyce of the Irish Traveller Movement reckons that "some were on the move and some were opportunistic, using the site for scrap and removal and using that as a cover for dumping . . . Some had a genuine case against the council and were challenging it in the courts and that gave others a longer stay than they might otherwise have had."
Now it seems that many settled Travellers are weary of being left to carry the can for their transient comrades.
The urgent prioritisation of sites for transients over the crisis permanent accommodation programme by the Minister, to pre-empt another Dodder-type summer fiasco, has not only exasperated local authorities.
"I don't have a problem with the idea of sites being built for transient Travellers," says Thomas Stokes, a settled Traveller, shopkeeper and member of Longford County Council, "but I think before transient sites are allowed in a county, a survey would have to be done among local Travellers to see did they want them."
A Traveller further west agreed: "If you did a survey of 150 Travellers in this area, I guarantee 120 would say no to transient sites. The thing is you could have spent 12 months getting things right with the local people, then they come and upset everything."
The feeling at every level is that there are groups of Travellers who offend with impunity. The question is how to challenge them.
In the settled community, the Garda exercise that role, but many on the settled side hold that Travellers must confront and testify against their own offenders.
"It is true that the gardaí or local authorities won't use the same diligence in pursuing Travellers and that's because it is difficult to bring a successful case against a member of a transient community against whom no one will give evidence", says Fine Gael TD Olivia Mitchell.
Many Traveller women, worn out and already living in fear, are horrified that they would be expected to risk their lives by confronting their tormentors.
"I think," said one, "that the guards' attitude is 'they're Travellers, they're all related, they'll make it up tomorrow or the next day, it's the culture'."
Add to that the unshakeable belief among many that when they do complain, confidentiality is not guaranteed. "You could end up injured or dead because of that."
According to Mick Fagan of South Dublin County Council, 37 cases were taken against Travellers on the Dodder, resulting in one prison sentence for non-possession of a dog licence. The litter cases collapsed through lack of evidence against individuals.
"We did all we could," he says, "but again, it was made out to be our fault for failing to enforce the law."
Travellers hold that the council had only to post a few burly guards near the site to collect all the evidence they needed.
Some suspect an absence of will. One anti-social family evicted to huge general relief from a halting site recently was back within hours and challenging the order in the courts with the help of a solicitor whose name was supplied by a Travellers support group.
One supporter says, however: "If someone asks us for a list of solicitors, what are we supposed to do? That family should have been bound to the peace and when they breached that, they should have been put in prison. Meanwhile, they become more and more powerful".
Simple, then? Evicting a Traveller is no simple matter, says Mick Fagan. "If you evict a settled family, they'll find a roof over their heads somewhere. Travellers will just park up on the side of the road and you're back to square one".
More tomorrow
Citizen Traveller is a Government supported campaign which aims to help members of the Travelling community and to promote understanding between Travellers and other members of society.