Just 19 of 157 units of accommodation have been provided in south Dublin, writes Kitty Holland
Kathleen Stokes (34) and her 11 children live in one caravan, with neither hot running water, showering facilities nor a flush-toilet. The five youngest sleep with her in the living-room area, while the six older children, aged up to 10, sleep in the bedroom.
"There's a cold tap outside. I get a basin of water to clean the children. Or else they go out to the tap," she says, resting in the sitting area of her medium-sized van. "It is hard to keep them clean, especially because they keep falling in the stones and the mud outside."
On a drizzly morning this week the ground outside is stoney, dirty and with pools of "black stuff and sewage" which apparently seeps up through the ground after rainfall. Each of the 20 bays on this "emergency" halting site, off the Balgaddy Road in Clondalkin, Co Dublin, has a Portaloo, though they are not lit and do not flush. They are meant to be emptied weekly but according to Kathleen this does not always happen.
"At night it is hard bringing the little ones out to the toilet. It's pitch dark and the place is crawling with the rats."
Her daughter, Winnie Marie (2), spent five weeks in Tallaght Children's Hospital during the summer with a liver condition, while several of the children currently have impetigo, a bacterial skin infection, brought on, says Kathleen, "by the dirt of the place and how hard it is to keep them clean". Three year-old Christopher lifts his jumper to reveal dry, red sores which look sore, itchy and worse than the ones on his face.
Kathleen's family is one of 20, including 50 children aged between three weeks and 17 years, on the site. Almost three years ago they were told by South Dublin County Council (SDCC) they would have to move from the unofficial site they occupied about 500 yards down the road, to make way for 154 houses and apartments there. Kathleen's father, Mr Pat Mongan, was among those told to move. He died, aged 60, just after Christmas on the emergency site.
"All he wanted these past five years was a decent place for his children and grandchildren to live. He died and the council broke every promise they ever made to him," says Kathleen.
He had been reluctant to move with his family to another filthy site. However, the council promised the new site would be tarmacadamed and that service units - with hot running water, bathing and toilet facilities and plumbed for washing machine - would be installed "immediately". Facilities are undoubtedly better than the bank of mud they lived on before, but almost two years on no tarmacadam has been laid and none of the other facilities provided.
In contrast, the 154 units of housing for the settled community at the site up the road are almost finished.
"It is hard to believe," says Ms Anne Costello of the Clondalkin Travellers Development Group, "that one section of the housing unit can build 154 houses in that time but another can't, or won't plumb a 20-bay site. Nothing so starkly underlines the priorities of the council".
Like all other councils around the State SDCC adopted a Traveller Accommodation Programme in March 2000, due to be fully implemented by the end of this year. SDCC has committed itself to 157 units of Traveller accommodation. Some 19 have been provided, though Mr Michael Fagan, head of Traveller accommodation at SDCC, says "it was always going to be in the final year of the programme that the actual units would be delivered". Site identification, "virtual civil wars" with settled residents and planning permission, had to be completed first.
On the Balgaddy Road situation, he acknowledges he promised hot running water and service units with washing facilities. "I have to acknowledge that we failed." He says, however, there was a series of problems. For example, contractors, citing public liability risks, would not work on the site while the Travellers were in situ, he said.
"But we are about to go ahead and start the digging to put those facilities in place," he said yesterday.
The accommodation programme was progressing slowly, he said, adding that "a lot is about to happen". Some 68 units were about to be built, ten had almost completed the planning process while 40 were about to begin going through the planning process.