Republican News · Thursday 28 March 2002

New anti-Traveller law passed

As the Dáil met for what was one of its last sitting days before the general election last Wednesday, 27 March, the government rushed through a piece of legislation which gives sweeping new powers to gardaí and local authorities to 'move on' Travellers.

On Wednesday the government tagged onto the Housing Bill new amendments which will allow gardaí to confiscate caravans and cars and to force Travellers off lands they are occupying without authorisation. Ostensibly proposed to deal with high-profile incidents where groups of Travellers camped on football pitches and similar sites last summer, the new legislation has much wider implications. It was brought in without consultation with Traveller representative groups and some of these are now threatening to withdraw in protest from the government's National Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee.

Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin described the legislation, which amends public order law, and the way it was introduced as "disgraceful". He said in the Dáil:

"The word 'Travellers' is not mentioned in these amendments but we know it is against Travellers that they are directed. Outside the House today are representatives of the Irish Traveller Movement, the Travellers Cultural Centre, Pavee Point and the National Traveller Women's Forum. They are rightly outraged that this amendment has been tabled by the Minister without any consultation with Travellers' representatives. Let me ask a question.

"Is this the best way to address the stated concerns of the Minister of State, Deputy Wallace, and Deputies Mitchell and Roche, concerns which I acknowledge require addressing? The answer, in my opinion, is a categoric No.

"I am a member of the County Monaghan Traveller Accommodation Consultation Committee and I can only imagine the reaction of some other elected colleagues, dedicated and sincere council officials, and of the representatives of the Traveller community in County Monaghan who sit on that committee, to this disgraceful piggyback exercise by the government in its dying hours.

"Mary O'Donoghue of the National Traveller Womens' Forum states that Traveller representatives on the National Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee will be considering their further participation on the committee and their engagement with the National Traveller Accommodation Strategy if these amendments go through. She states that the minister's failure to inform them of the amendments makes a mockery of their work at all levels. I agree.

"Martin Collins of Pavee Point states that it is impossible for the minister to expect Traveller organisations to work closely with his Department when he does not even inform them that he is about to increase local authority powers to evict Travellers and criminalise communities of Travellers because they have nowhere to live.

"The backdrop to the debate today is the failure of successive governments to provide adequate accommodation of a sufficient standard to the Traveller community. The reality is that there are only 111 units of Traveller-specific accommodation when a promised 2,200 units were identified and are required. The government and the local authorities have failed to provide the promised accommodation, including halting sites. Now Travellers are to be subject to these new draconian laws so that local authorities and the gardaí can remove them in a summary fashion. That is a disgrace.

"The Minister's amendments also have wider implications for civil rights. We are being asked in a couple of hours, and within one hour of my speaking here today, to enact major new laws on trespass giving very wide new powers to the local authorities and the gardaí. This has implications for the rights to peaceful protest.

"This is a cynical pre-election ploy by the government and it will do nothing to address the need of Traveller accommodation and will, as I have already stated, poison the atmosphere in which we are trying to foster better relations between Travellers and the settled communities.

"There are two ways of approaching all problems; a combination of carrot and stick, but all I see employed in relation to the issue of Traveller accommodation and the 'move on' mentality is stick, stick, stick, and we are seeing more of it here today. It is a disgrace. To where will the gardaí redirect people in situations where they force them to move on?

Unless we address the need to provide essential accommodation opportunities in a range of different ways, ways identified by Travellers, we will never find a solution to this matter, and we will not find one by way of the type of proposition that has been put before this House."