Relations between Travellers and the settled community are "worse than ever and could reach a crisis", a group of Traveller organisations have warned. Kitty Holland reports.
Describing a growing mood of despair among Travellers, they said unless political leadership on improving relations was shown, reconciliation between the two may be unreachable.
Mr Martin Collins, assistant director of the Pavee Point, was one of the speakers at a press conference in Dublin yesterday, urging Government to do more "than just introduce draconian anti-Traveller legislation".
Yesterday's initiative was supported by the National Traveller Women's Forum and the Parish of the Travelling People.
Media reporting of recent events, such as large summer encampments, were exacerbating problems, said Mr Collins.
While acknowledging there was anti-social behaviour among some Travellers, media reporting had largely been "unbalanced and out of context".
Rather than look at why Travellers were camping illegally and in such large numbers, reports focused on "anti-social" behaviour, he said.
There were legal transient sites in just two counties - Kerry and Donegal - he pointed out, despite the fact each local authority had been mandated by central Government to provide transient accommodation.
The Housing Miscellaneous Act, 2002, which empowers gardaí to evict illegally camped Travellers was being used to evict individual Traveller families from their homes, and was a "blatant attack on Travellers' nomadic identity".
He said there was "a fundamental clash between nomadic and settled" ways of life, a refusal to accept or accommodate nomadism and blatant prejudice and racism inherent in attitudes and some policy.
A spokeswoman for the Department of the Environment rejected charges of discrimination and said anti-trespass legislation was necessary to deal with large illegal encampments. Since its introduction, anti-trespass legislation has been used on 140 occasions.
Mr Collins said the legislation had helped create the phenomenon of Travellers moving together in large numbers.
They used to travel in small groups but the legislation had "forced them to become more strategic". He said Travellers knew it was more difficult to evict them in large numbers.
Ms Ronnie Fay, also of Pavee Point, called for a national Traveller accommodation agency, to take responsibility for provision of accommodation away from local authorities which, she said, "are unable or unwilling". Local councillors and residents were too vulnerable to the "NIMBY" attitude, she said.
Travellers' groups had proposed a reconciliation initiative to the Department of Justice last year, "but nothing has been done", said Mr Collins.
Such an initiative would involve business people, trade unionists, residents, farmers and other interested parties as well as Travellers, to "begin a process of dialogue", and try to get to the root of the worsening relations between Travellers and settled.
A spokeswoman for the Department said no submission had been received from Pavee Point though a number had been received on a replacement for the Citizen Traveller programme. These would be considered over the summer.
Not every single Traveller "is going to subscribe to the idea of dialogue", said Mr Collins. However, it was not surprising that increasing numbers of Travellers were "very disillusioned".
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