Policy of settling Travellers criticised

The Government policy of settling Travellers is having "profoundly negative consequences" on the Traveller community and should be stopped, an Irish Traveller Movement conference heard yesterday.

The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, should "formally repudiate" the policy of attempting to settle Travellers in order to preserve their nomadic culture, social researcher Dr Robbie McVeigh said. Resources should instead be concentrated on developing existing transient sites and creating new ones, he said.

A quarter of Travellers were "mobile" at any given time, he told the conference. Nomadism had persisted, "despite a concerted effort over the past 40 years by government in Ireland, north and south of the Border, to encourage Travellers to 'settle' and 'assimilate'."

However, "anti-nomadism" was nevertheless informing political attitudes, decisions and service provision to Travellers.

"A formal statement by the Taoiseach recognising the equality and parity of esteem of Irish Traveller nomadism would symbolically mark the end of the 'itinerant settlement' ideology and begin to lay to rest the profoundly negative consequences of over 40 years of sedentarist policies."

Transient site provision was the appropriate solution to Traveller accommodation, he said, and there needed to be "creative use of opportunities to develop other stopping places".