Council to meet Travellers over road closure

Dublin City Council will meet Traveller families in Finglas, north Dublin, today to try to defuse tensions over a decision by the local authority to close off a major access road to their homes.

Council workers placed two large concrete boulders on Tuesday morning at the Finglas entrance to Dunsink Lane, a 3 km stretch of road, linking Finglas and Castleknock, on which more than 80 Traveller families live.

The move is aimed at combatting what the council has described as "extensive and continuing illegal dumping of waste" in the area.

The 400 Travellers living on the lane said, however, that they were being "victimised" for a problem that was largely caused by people in the settled community.

Mr Martin Collins, of Pavee Point Traveller centre, said there were about five or six Traveller families involved in the "appalling" practice of illegal dumping, and this should be tackled. However, "to victimise the whole community is unacceptable. Traveller children going to school now have to take a seven-mile detour to get to Finglas."

The assistant Dublin city manager, Mr Matt Twomey, admitted yesterday that the illegal dumping "was significantly from outsiders and people using the lane on their way to and from other places". Only some local Travellers, he said, might be involved in the practice.

He added that the council regretted the inconvenience caused to the residents but "allowing the present situation to persist would have been negligent and would have inevitably led to further accidents".

Almost 200 Travellers protested yesterday next to the lane at Ratoath Road - one of the main arteries between Finglas and the city centre. Gardaí were on duty diverting traffic from the area.

Mr Collins said protests would continue during rush-hour each morning and evening until the boulders were removed.

"We regret that we have had to take this course of action just to get a meeting with the local authority. We are supposedly living in an era of partnership, negotiation and dialogue. But Travellers seem to be excluded from that."

Some 30 Traveller families living on the lane are based at unofficial but serviced halting sites, while the remainder are in group-housing or permanent halting sites. The lane is also home to the now closed Dunsink dump, and the Dunsink Observatory.