A HIGH COURT judge has urged talks between Travellers and Dublin City Council to try to resolve a dispute in which the council is seeking the removal of some 30 Traveller family caravans parked illegally near the M1 motorway.
Mr Justice Michael Peart said yesterday that, until alternative accommodation was provided by the council for the Gavin family, he would not make any order at this stage to prevent alleged trespass by about 100 members of the family at the 42-acre former Dublin Port Tunnel works site near the junction of Oscar Traynor Road and the M1/N32.
Martin Gavin, who described himself as the spokesman on behalf of the Gavin family, had agreed before the court they did not have permission to be on the land but added he did not believe they were trespassing. The Gavins claimed that if they were trespassing it was by virtue of necessity because the alternative accommodation offered meant they would be put into a dangerous situation.
The council had sought an injunction preventing further trespass on land which it says is being sold by it for development and for which contracts have already been agreed.
It said the Gavins were offered alternative accommodation at a site where they had lived for 25 years before they claimed they were violently forced out during a feud with another Traveller family, the McDonoughs.
That alternative site is St Dominick’s Park, Belcamp, and is about 1½ miles from where the family is at present.
Yesterday Mr Justice Peart said he would not make any order until the council was in a position to restore the St Dominick’s site into a habitable condition.
While the question of safety of the Gavins at St Dominick’s was something that would have to be considered, it was not the council’s function to police the Gavins or the McDonough family.
The judge said common sense suggested consultation should take place between all the parties affected as to how the “saga of hostility and violence” at St Dominick’s should end.
He was not “so divorced from reality as to ignore the possibility that these sentiments may fall on deaf ears”, he added.
He adjourned the matter for mention to January 30th.