Sir, - In his excellent Midlands Report (The Irish Times, July 23rd) Sean MacConnell quotes Mary O'Donoghue, a community development worker with the Tullamore Travellers' Movement, as saying that "in Tullamore most of the unhoused families live on a rat-infested site known as `The Sewerage' where conditions are awful."
It surprises me that no mention was made of the official halting site provided in Tullamore, with hard stands for about a dozen temporary dwellings, toilet facilities etc. A short distance away from the officially provided halting site one finds the conditions described by Ms O'Donoghue, just as shown in Matt Kavanagh's photograph.
If the travellers are to be accepted and an official halting site accepted without resistance by the settled community, the Minister for the Environment will have to enforce some regulation to prevent any unauthorised encampment being set up within a radius of two kilometres of an official halting site. - Yours, etc., F. T. Murphy,
Old Quarry, Dalkey, Co Dublin.