Local authorities throughout the State face legal challenges over their failure to implement their own Traveller Accommodation Programmes, the Irish Traveller Movement (ITM) has warned.
Two Traveller families in Co Kildare are preparing to seek a judicial review against their local authorities in the High Court.
The Athy families will claim Kildare County Council and Athy Town Council have failed to deliver on their commitments in their own Traveller Accommodation Programme, and so have breached their legal obligations.
It will be the first time that Travellers have legally challenged a local authority specifically for its failure to meet commitments in a Traveller Accommodation Programme.
Local authorities were mandated to draw up a five-year programme to accommodate Travellers within their catchment areas in 1998, to run from 1999.
The deadline passed last month but no local authority has fully implemented its programme.
Mr David Joyce, legal policy officer with the ITM, said most had implemented "about a third of their Programme".
Mr Joyce said the ITM had warned about this and "the time has come to deliver or face the possibility of multiple legal challenges".
The families at the centre of Athy case are members of an extended family.
Both named Carthy, they are native to Athy and have been living on the side of the road at separate locations in the town for over five years. They include seven children living without electricity, running water, a refuse collection or toilet facilities.
In seeking leave to seek the judicial review last month, Mr Seamus Clarke BL told the High Court that under the terms of Kildare County Council's Traveller Accommodation Programme it had committed itself to developing a six-unit group housing scheme in Athy.
This would free up permanent halting site bays for the Carthy families.
The families were recently told the Council did not expect to have the group housing scheme ready until 2006.
Mr Charlie Talbot, the Kildare county secretary, said yesterday that it would be premature to comment on the case since the matter was before the High Court.
He said that Kildare County Council was currently in the process of drawing up its second Traveller Accommodation Programme which would run until 2009.
Sr Rosarii Martin, co-ordinator of the Athy Travellers' Club, said the "neglect of these families is absolutely disgraceful. They have spent Christmas on the side of the road with no facilities, no privacy, no comfort. It is a repeat of what happened to the parents of the same families years ago," she said.
Despite no local authority having implemented its 1999-2004 Programme, the councils are now drawing up Programmes to run for five years from February.
