The town of Rathkeale in Co Limerick is “dying” and will be populated 100 per cent by Travellers within 10 years because nobody else wants to live or do business there, a local community worker has said.
Rathkeale’s community co-ordinator David Breen told a forum the population of the area declined by 26 per cent between 1990 and 2006 while the population of nearby Newcastlewest increased by 51 per cent.
A prominent Rathkeale-based Traveller and businessman Richard Kerry O’Brien, told the conference organised by Waterford Institute of Technology’s Criminal Justice Society the town’s main hope was “if the two communities pull together”. Attempts such as meetings, barbecues, Christmas events and the St Patrick’s Day parades were being used to try and get the Traveller and settled communities interacting and engaging, he said.
Mr Breen said these were in the early stages of development. “The town will die if we don’t succeed. You only have to drive through the main street of Rathkeale and see the number of business premises that are closed or converted to residential use.”
He said 80 per cent of all private property in Rathkeale was now owned by the Travelling community.
“We have two communities and they’re living in parallel universes. We have very clear Traveller sections and very clear settled sections. The Main Street is common ground . . . It’s a town that’s dying.”
‘Deep pain’
The economic boom “missed Rathkeale,” he said, “because nobody wants to live there. Why? Because of the Traveller community. It’s a town that will, in all likelihood, become 100 per cent Traveller or very nearly 100 per cent Traveller in the next 10 years.”
He said he was “horrified” when he first arrived to work in Rathkeale some years ago by some of the treatment to which Travellers were subjected.
There was no “fighting on the streets” or open conflict, “but there is deep pain in both communities – one feeling their town is being taken over, the other fighting for a place in a community where they can’t be moved on again.”
Mr O’Brien said the future of the town depended on whether the Travelling and settled communities could work together. “We’re going to try and get meetings together and try and get it off the ground.”
However, he also told the conference that, having travelled around much of the world, “I’ve never seen a more racist country” than Ireland.
Former academic secretary at Trinity College Dublin Salters Sterling, who has worked with Travellers for many years, said he believed there is a future for Rathkeale. But while equality legislation outlawing discrimination was now on our statute books, “the question is how do we change our own hearts”.