ELAINE HARVEY,
A chara - I am writing on behalf of the board of Galway City Partnership to declare our support for the Irish Traveller community in their opposition to the amendment to the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act 1998.
We believe that the procedure used to draft this legislation has seriously undermined social partnership and serves further to alienate the most marginalised groups in our society. We object strongly to this amendment on the following grounds:
1. It infringes on the cultural rights of Travellers and their nomadic tradition.
2. The method in which the Bill was progressed amounts to a rejection of the process of consultation and social partnership upon which the work of many if not all, local development organisations, including area-based partnerships, depends.
3. It fails to reinforce the statutory obligation on local authorities to provide transient sites.
We call on the next government to annul this law and to engage in a proper consultative process to ensure a solution that is acceptable to all groups involved.
The Galway City Partnership aims to tackle disadvantage and social exclusion and works from the principles of community development: participation, equality,anti-racism, and solidarity with the most marginalised. - Is mise,
ELAINE HARVEY,
Chairperson,
Galway City Partnership,
Headford Road,
Galway.