With a report on Traveller housing due next week, one town where residents picketed for months against a halting site wonders what the fuss was about, writes Kitty Holland
Mary Nevin (49) and her family lived in various fields and roadsides for 20 years before moving into a permanent, serviced halting site eight years ago.
"Just before we were in a mud field in Trim for three years, with no toilet, electricity or water. We had to get water in a tank and go to the toilet, well, in the field or a garage." Eight years ago she, her husband and five children got a place in St Francis Park, a 14-bay site on the Windtown Road in Navan, Co Meath.
Sitting at a small tiled-top table in the living space adjacent to her family's two caravans, Mary says improvements could be made. The living area is damp, the walls are partially scarred with mildew and the driving rain outside seeps under the front door as we chat. Meath County Council says the site is due for "remedial works" in 2006.
"But yes," nods Mary, "it is better than where we were." The large bays can accommodate two caravans and all have a shed-like outhouse, or living space, with basic kitchen, washing and toilet facilities. There's electricity, refuse collection and a caretaker. In her bay Mary has planted three ornamental trees and tends a number of neat window-boxes.
Despite Mary's concerns about living conditions, St Francis Park is held up as an example of how Traveller halting-site accommodation can co-exist harmoniously with settled housing.
Things were very different in 1995, when plans for the site were mooted.
A major report from the National Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee (NTACC) on progress in the provision of Traveller accommodation is to be published by the Minister of State for Housing, Noel Ahern, next week. In this context, a decade on, the ferocity of the Windtown row provides "interesting lessons" as people involved reflect.
At the time, Navan's town councillors, including Patsy O'Neill and then senator John V. Farrelly, united to reject the county manager's plans. Hostile anti-Traveller letters were written to the local newspaper, the Meath Chronicle, while local residents mounted a 24-hour picket at the site, which was maintained for more than six months.
A report in the Meath Chronicle at the time quoted Farrelly as saying: "the determination shown by residents who oppose the site in their 24-hour, five-months long picket at Windtown Road is something I have never encountered before". In the end the council was forced to go to the High Court to obtain an injunction against the residents' picket, to face down objections and press on.
Since then, houses have been built all around St Francis Park. Residents of the adjacent Tailteann housing estate told The Irish Times during the week they had no problems with the Traveller neighbours. "I can't remember trouble - no, never," said one elderly, bespectacled man who asked not to be named. A young couple said they rarely noticed the Travellers were there.
O'Neill says now of St Francis Park: "It worked out very well. It has blended in with the location well."
Looking back, says Farrelly, the big lesson is that assurances were given by the Travellers that there would be no trouble, while the council committed itself to providing a caretaker who would ensure it was well maintained. "There was give and take on both sides."
Clare Davey, national accommodation officer with the Irish Traveller Movement (ITM), says it is a frequent experience. "There are huge rows and resistance when Traveller accommodation is proposed. And when it's built everyone wonders what all the fuss was about."
Progress in providing Traveller accommodation has been painfully slow, partly because of such battles. If the current rate of provision continues, says former TD and Minister of State, Chris Flood, who chairs the NTACC, "the issue will not be solved for 20 years".
At the same time, local authorities are drawing up their second Traveller Accommodation Plans, to be adopted in April and to run until 2008. But Traveller groups are concerned that this is being done before the NTACC report on the first plan is published. The time frame for the implementation of the first plan expired last month, and Traveller groups estimate that only one-third of the accommodation to which local authorities committed themselves has been provided.
Alec Fleming, manager of Clare County Council and a member of the NTACC, stresses the number of Travellers living in the inevitably appalling conditions of the roadside has fallen since 1999, from about 1,100 to 788.
He says there are difficulties acquiring land for "Traveller-specific accommodation", i.e. group housing and halting sites. He is hopeful, however, that with an increasing proportion of Travellers willing to take private rented or local authority housing the pace will increase.
Davey, and other Traveller advocates who have spoken to The Irish Times, have expressed concern at an implicit "settlement policy" in local authorities' approach to Travellers.
"If you were living by the side of the road with young children and were told there was a local authority house now or a halting site place in five years, which would you take?" asks Davey. She says many taking houses would prefer the choice of a halting site or group housing.
However, Fleming says all Travellers are consulted about their accommodation wishes and a growing proportion is opting for housing rather than caravans.
Like Flood, he believes there is less resistance from the general public to Traveller halting sites than there was five years ago. However, the provision of Traveller accommodation continues to be problematic. Flood recounts other flashpoints similar to Navan. "The venom that is unleashed is fierce. It is acceptable to be anti-Traveller in a way it would not be to be anti-black."
Cllr Gerry Breen, leader of the Fine Gael group on Dublin City Council, is more moderate than that but probably reflects the views of many when he says Travellers "have lost public sympathy".
"People can judge a group only on their experience of them and for the vast majority of the ordinary public, when you say "Traveller" they think Dunsink, Dodder encampment, N32 encampment."
The provision of Traveller accommodation should be dependent on Travellers "meeting their responsibilities rather than always looking for their rights", Breen argues. While he does not spell out what contribution Travellers might make, he says Traveller accommodation will not be politically popular until the public's experience improves.
Flood, in a roundabout way, agrees. "The settled community's general experience of Travellers in their disorganised state has not been a positive one. That feeds part of the reaction. But if someone is going to make a pretty hard-hitting statement about another human being they have to understand why it is Travellers have got to this situation."
The reason, he continues, is that they have had no services. "If they do not have a refuse service, for example, then of course there is going to be litter. Accommodation is the key thing," he says. "We can't do anything significant for them, nor can they for themselves unless there is accommodation that meets their needs."
One of the recommendations in next week's NTACC report is that the establishment of an independent agency on Traveller accommodation be examined. O'Neill too believes such an agency, which would take the provision of Traveller accommodation out of politicians' hands, should be established. Travellers' groups have sought this.
"At the time," says O'Neill, explaining his 1995 opposition to the St Francis Park site, "we had to represent the views of our constituents." Others, such as Fleming and Farrelly disagree, saying local authorities are best placed to carry out consultation and site identification.
Flood believes the idea of a Traveller Accommodation Agency must be examined. "If this State can't deal with the needs of1,200 families," he says, "there's something seriously wrong."