TRAVELLERS NO TO SHANTY SITES AND BULLY-
BOY COUNCILS

Travellers and their supporters held a protest on 
December 10th last year. The march was against the 
Dublin local authorities' policy of herding Travellers 
into primitive temporary sites and forced removal of 
Travellers into these officially constructed shanty 
towns.  Temporary sites have no electricity, no showers 
or baths, no fire precautions or public phones and are 
all situated in isolated areas or beside motorways, 
surrounded by high walls or mounds of earth.  The 
following report was issued by the Dublin 
Accommodation Coalition with Travellers:

"Local Authorities are responsible for bringing many 
Travellers to an early grave by forcing them into 
"temporary sites" that lack the most basic facilities.  
These officially planned and sanctioned shanty towns 
contribute to the third world nature of Travellers' 
health profile. Only two out of every hundred 
Travellers live to see 65 years of age.  The infant 
mortality rate is three times the national average.  

Local authorities are charged with the provision of 
decent healthy accommodation and they have failed 
miserably, and not only have they failed to provide it, 
they are deliberately sanctioning these "temporary" site 
death traps and then herding, bullying, intimidating 
and evicting Travellers to force them into them.  In the 
most heavy handed way, they are reneging on the spirit 
if not the letter of many court judgements using tactics 
that the Ku Klux Klan would be proud of, arriving at 
dawn to bulldoze Traveller men, women and children 
out of camps."  

Thus spoke Thomas McCann at the protest march 
which was organised by the Dublin Accommodation 
Coalition for Travellers in Dublin city centre to mark 
the U.N. International Day for Human Rights.  The 
march culminated outside the Dail with Santa 
delivering ten small white coffins, representing the 
temporary sites in the Dublin area, to the seat of power 
and responsibility.

"In 1986 the ESRI said that 'the living circumstances of 
Irish travellers are intolerable. No humane and decent 
society, once made aware of these circumstances, would 
allow them to persist.'  It's 1995 and not only do they 
persist, they're getting worse," said Gearoid O Riain.  
"What does this tell us about Irish society? John Bruton 
and his government colleagues were all stressing 
recently, in another debate, the need to respect 
minorities in Ireland and the need to provide for 
minorities.  We couldn't have said it better ourselves, 
John. Now let's start seeing some of this respect for 
Travellers."

"Christmas is a time for peace and solidarity, a time for 
children and families, a time for reunions and 
celebrations. And it's time to focus on the living 
circumstances of one of Ireland's most excluded groups 
- Travellers.  For many Travellers it's a miserable time, 
a time when the sense of not being wanted is most 
obvious.  1,200 Traveller families are living in 
appalling conditions, lacking basic facilities such as 
clean water and toilets.  

It's time to stop evictions. It's time for residents' 
associations to live and let live. It's time for the 
government to set about achieving its own target of 
providing enough sites by the year 2000.  It's time to 
speed up implementation of the recommendations in 
the Task Force report.  It's time to stop herding 
Travellers into large "temporary" sites which are unfit 
for human living.  It's time for all decent citizens to 
show solidarity and support for Travellers' rights," said 
John O'Connell.


