Increasing numbers of Travellers are being evicted, but are the local authorities targeting the real problem, asks Joe Humphreys
It was a fortnight before their exams, but instead of studying, Hughie (16) and Thomas (14) Maguire were wrestling with gardaí. "They nearly broke my chain," said the younger of the two, rubbing his shoulder where he was held while trying to stop his home from being taken away.
The gardaí, a force of 14 with a tow-truck, had been there since 7 a.m., fulfilling orders on behalf of Cork City Council to evict six families illegally encamped on a halting-site laneway at Mahon. Five of the families took flight, but the Maguires stood their ground and had the "children's trailer" seized as a result. The teenagers' clothes were inside. Their TV and schoolbooks too.
The trailer seized, the family of 12 rushed to protect their remaining caravan. Some children locked themselves inside, while others removed the wheels of the van so it couldn't be towed. Their mother, Anne, fretted over her youngest girls, Martha (7) and Anna (6), one of whom has a heart murmur, the other asthma.
"If you frighten them, and something happens . . ." she addressed a garda, her voice trembling. "I'm going to hold you responsible."
After a five-hour stand-off, the gardaí left, promising to return.
That was two months ago, and every night since Thomas has slept in the boot of a Nissan Micra parked next to the trailer. He can't extend his legs and, when he moves, his back jams into a spare wheel jutting up from the floor. If he lowers the wheel it leaves a hole for him to fall into. Asked how he finds the conditions, he replies: "Awkward."
Three of his brothers are sleeping in other cars on the site, while his father and some of his other siblings share the main caravan.
As for Hughie, he was already behind on his Junior Cert studies, and the eviction put an end to any chance of him sitting his exams.
"That's 16 years down the drain for what? No Junior Cert to show for it, no nothing," says Anne, who had taken five of her children into a women's refuge to ease the strain at the site. "Sixteen years gone in one eviction."
One eviction of at least 1,000 experienced by Traveller families across the State over the past three years, according to figures obtained by The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act. In the year ended May 31st, 2003 alone, a total of 452 notices were served against Travellers under Section 10 of the Housing (Miscellaneous) Provision Act, 1992, which was amended by anti- trespass legislation last year to prohibit any encampment within one mile of an existing halting-site.
While Section 10 is the most common means of moving Travellers, it is not the only one. Section 19 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1994, which was amended under the trespass law to give gardaí powers of seizure, and Section 69 of the Roads Act, 1993, prohibiting roadside dwellings, are also used. In Cork alone, 138 evictions have been secured in the past 12 months under the different provisions, according to the local Traveller Visibility Group. It is a figure which the City Council says "it probably did not dispute", although a spokesman remarks: "We're only talking about 30 to 40 families".
Whatever about the total number of evictions, the trend appears to be upward. Of 36 local authorities surveyed by The Irish Times, 14 reported an increase in Section 10s between 2001 and 2003 and only seven a decline. Clare County Council, which this week last year became the first local authority to enforce the trespass law, is now issuing more than three times as many such notices as in 2002; South Dublin County Council more than four times as many.
The most common justification used by local authorities is that the Travellers are not "indigenous" to the area - a concept disputed in almost every case. Anne Maguire points out that her husband lived in Cork for 35 years, five of their children were born there, and as a family they lived in a house in Mahon for two years. But because they moved to Dundalk for eight months last year to take care of a sick relative their entitlements "back home" appeared to have been lost.
For some Travellers the "indigenous" rule creates a state of limbo. An example is Mary O'Donoghue, who counted Shannon, Co Clare, as her home but also spent 12 years in Doolin and more in Co Cork. Four years ago, however, when the local authorities drafted their Traveller accommodation plans, neither Cork nor Clare accepted her as "indigenous". Thus began a series of evictions, and the elderly woman - who was suffering from bowel cancer - was moved from one site to the next. Finally, she lived in a disused car-park in Cork, where last year she died next to a rubbish-dump.
A similar fate could await Mary's daughter-in-law of the same name, who is seriously ill and currently living at the side of the N20 between Cork and Mallow without water or toilet facilities. Last October, up to 60 loads of earth were dumped on either side of her caravan by unidentified workers. Gardaí are investigating the act, which the local authorities have denied carrying out.
Similar tension can be found in Co Clare, where the local authority has pursued some Travellers through the courts. Among them is Margaret McDonagh, who has been forced to move three times in as many months, from the site of the former Our Lady's Psychiatric Hospital in Ennis, to Ballymaley Industrial Estate a mile further out of town, and most recently - and controversially - to the grounds of Ennis Town Council's offices.
The town's mayor, Peter Considine, blamed the move for the cancellation last month of a planned Special Olympics civic reception on council lawns.
But, says McDonagh, the Travellers in question were never told about the reception, and "if they'd asked us to move behind the trees we would have done so. The first we heard of it was when it was on the radio". Since then, she says, she and her husband have been trying to find rental accommodation.
"But when we call they make up all types of excuses," she says. "They say, 'We would prefer two females', that kind of thing. We just can't seem to win."
David Joyce, of the Irish Travellers' Movement, says the plight of such families underlines the need for a new agency to make compulsory purchase orders for land for Traveller accommodation. Citing a "visible increase in evictions" in recent months, Joyce warns that local authorities are using the anti-trespass legislation against individual or small groups of families rather than the large encampments that were its target.
"The reality is the law is only going to affect small groups where it is possible for the gardaí to move them," he says.
Evidence of this could be found in Clondalkin, west Dublin recently, where up to 20 families lived together for months in an unauthorised encampment.
Mick Fagan, South Dublin County Council's Traveller accommodation officer, says he makes "no apology" for issuing Sections 10s. "They're essential to the integrity of our accommodation programme", providing a guarantee to the settled community that official halting-sites in their locality will not be allowed to expand. Normally, he claims, the first people to complain about unauthorised encampments next to halting-sites are the Travellers authorised to be there.
Local Traveller activist Damien Peelo sees things differently, claiming the new legislation has encouraged more large encampments. "Because of the threat of seizure, people are finding security in numbers," he says. "They're also finding themselves herded into one location."
For the Maguires, this week ended more happily than it began. Two days ago, the City Council told them they could move into a vacant bay in the halting-site at Mahon. They are due to have their seized caravan returned to them today. For others, however, the threat of eviction still weighs heavily.
"It's horrendous to be served with these notices, and even more horrendous to be evicted," says Peelo. "A caravan should be respected as a home. It's not a piece of tin to throw around."
"Think what it's like for a child to grow up with this," he adds. "To have these people telling you to pack up and go in very tense circumstances, where some of the language will, no doubt, be choice. How many times are they going to be evicted before they reach adulthood? And will they ever forget how it felt?"