Travellers remaining on site at Dodder face council move today

Any Travellers remaining today on an unauthorised site in Rathfarnham, Dublin, will be served with notices giving them 24 hours…

Any Travellers remaining today on an unauthorised site in Rathfarnham, Dublin, will be served with notices giving them 24 hours to leave.

Up to 60 caravans were parked on the site along Dodder Park Road last Friday, but by last evening only a handful remained.

Local residents complained last night that the Travellers who departed over the weekend left behind mounds of rubbish on the site close to Rathfarnham shopping centre.

The head of South Dublin County Council's Traveller unit, Mr Mick Fagan, said the Rathfarnham situation would be reassessed today.

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The numbers of Travellers on the site swelled last Friday when they were joined by about 20 of some 50 caravans moved by council officials from another unauthorised site, in Firhouse.

Before the county council can ask any new arrivals at the Rathfarnham site to move, it must serve them with statutory notices giving them 24 hours to leave. Mr Fagan said that any Travellers remaining on the site today would be issued with new notices.

It had been expected that some Travellers might oppose the council's move today with a High Court injunction. An attempt to do this last Friday to prevent Travellers being moved from the Firhouse site was abandoned amid mutual recrimination between a Travellers' representative group and the council. Mr Damien Peelo from the Tallaght Traveller Community Development Project said the Travellers had mixed needs and should have been treated as individuals.

Mr Fagan said the council did not have sufficient temporary sites to cope with the number of Travellers who had moved to the area in recent days.