Vintners meet to discuss all-out campaign

JUNIOR Justice Minister Willie O’Dea has called on vintners to call off their pub bans against Travellers until talks aimed at resolving the dispute get underway.

The minister’s appeal comes as the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland prepare to meet tonight when an all-out ban on serving drink to Travellers will be discussed.

“I’m asking them to hold off any protests until we sit around a table next week, like any reasonable people,” Mr O’Dea said.

“Publicans must be entitled to keep an orderly house, but we can’t have a situation where people are refused entry to a pub just because of their ethnic background, religion or race.”

Pubs in Westport in Co Mayo have introduced a blanket ban on serving Travellers in the last week and the VFI will address the issue tonight when its management committee meets in Portlaoise.

Support is said to be growing among publicans for a nationwide ban but the president of the VFI, John Browne, said this was unlikely. Their concerns centre on equality legislation which many publicans say gives protection to Travellers, while settled people barred for similar rowdy behaviour have no comeback.

Under equality legislation any Traveller who is discriminated against can take a case to the Director of Equality Investigations who has the power to make awards up to €5,000.

Mr Browne said tonight’s meeting would focus on calls to relax the Equal Status Act to allow publicans run an orderly house.

He also rejected suggestions publicans were anti-Traveller but said they would refuse known troublemakers or people they believed would disrupt the atmosphere of a pub.

Travellers’ groups have accused publicans of looking for any excuse to undermine the equal status legislation.

Catherine Joyce of the Irish Traveller Movement said the VFI’s decision to support publicans who refuse service to Travellers was outlandish and racist.

Minister O’Dea said he would listen to both sides in the dispute and attempt to find a way of resolving the dispute, adding: “What I want to do is bring about a solution. I will address the publicans’ problems with the equality legislation and listen to Travellers’ experiences. This is a serious issue and it must be resolved quickly.”

He said he was hopeful they could make some progress, but pointed out that he had limited authority in the area of any changes to the law.

At tonight’s publicans’ meeting Chris Lavelle, the leader of a large group of publicans who have enforced the exclusion of Travellers from licensed premises in Westport, will be leading the call for a national ban.

Pat O’Leary of the Equality Authority said the number of claims was disturbing and reflected persistent, sustained and endemic discrimination.

Of the 670 claims referred last year under the Equal Status Act, 426 were against pubs or hotels and 81% of these related to Travellers.