Denied the right to roam

Local authorities have failed to provide for Travellers’ distinct needs, explains Dan Buckley.

I'm a freeborn man of the Travelling people

Got no fixed abode, with nomads I am numbered

Country lanes and byways were always my ways

I never fancied being lumbered

-The Travelling People

FOR CENTURIES the nomadic tribes of Ireland roamed the nation's byways, untrammelled by convention and, in general, regarded benignly by the settled community.

Now, that way of life is facing its biggest challenge ever, prompted by the failure of local authorities to provide for their distinct needs and the criminalisation of trespass under the 2002 Housing Act, a legislative provision used almost exclusively against Travellers.

The main thrust of local authority activity in the provision of accommodation has been to settle Travellers in houses; in effect, rejecting their status as nomads. Although housing is the wish of many Travellers, there are over 1,000 who choose to roam but who are now forced to break the law in order to do so.

While most local authorities have all but ignored their own legal obligations, Travelling families are either being forced to accept the inevitability of being housed, face prosecution for illegal camping or endure squalid conditions in emergency halting sites.

The Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act made it an offence to enter and occupy land, or bring on to it any object that is likely to have one of five specified detrimental effects on the land or amenity. It provides no defence to this offence and gardaí can force Travellers to move on, even those awaiting accommodation within local authority areas.

The legislation may breach both the constitutional rights of Travellers and their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, according to the Human Rights Commission, an organisation set up under the Belfast Agreement with a remit to comment on the human rights implications of legislation.

The anti-trespass law has been widely seen as aimed at Travelling families who park their caravans on unauthorised sites or vacant property. The Act is facing a constitutional challenge in the High Court from four Travelling families in Clare who were charged under it when they trespassed on local authority land.

The Human Rights Commission argues that members of the Travelling community are forced to trespass on land because of the failure of local authorities to meet their statutory duty to provide sites, as mandated under the Section 13 of the 1988 Housing Act. It says the legislation "flies in the face of the progress that has been made in recent years in recognising the ethnicity of Travellers and the legitimacy of nomadism". According to the Commission, the anti-trespass law is inconsistent with Irish equality legislation and, internationally, the Durban Declaration on Racism.

While local authorities are gung-ho about halting illegal camping, they are far less energetic in meeting their own obligations. The Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act of 1998 required each housing authority to adopt a five year Traveller Accommodation Programme and to take 'reasonable steps' to implement it by this year.

According to Travellers' rights organisations, only two Councils Donegal and Westmeath have gone anywhere near to doing so.

The experience in Donegal, according to Siobhán McLoughlin of the Donegal Traveller Development Project, has been that the provision of transient sites has all but removed illegal camping in the county and provided "a better starting point to build up good relations with locals".

Lack of action elsewhere could leave other local authorities open to a raft of legal actions to force them to accommodate the lifestyle of nomadic Travellers.

According to Damien Peelo, former co-ordinator of the Tallaght Traveller Community Development Project, that is exactly what will happen. "The legal route seems to be an effective way of enforcing rights," he said.

An estimated 1,200 Travellers are described as "transient", although this figure rises to at least 2,000 during the summer. Two transient sites sites where nomadic Travellers can come, stay a few nights and move on are in Co Donegal. A third is in Athlone, Co Westmeath.

"As long as there are no official transient sites, nomadic Travellers are, effectively, being forced to break the law," Mr Peelo said, "And the anti-trespass legislation, which was introduced last year, has made things a lot worse."

Bernard Joyce, community development worker with the Clondalkin Travellers Development Group, agrees.

"The councils are not meeting their obligations yet people are now being criminalised for living as a Traveller. In Clondalkin not one new unit of accommodation has been built since the programme was adopted in March 2000. The 1998 legislation has not impacted on the ground as it should have, yet the number of evictions under the same legislation has actually increased. There were 500 in South Dublin last year. Many families have literally died waiting for accommodation."

Mr Joyce said the legal route may be the only option for many Travellers. "I think people can take individual cases on health grounds alone. There are some families looking to take a case because they know the local authority is not delivering on the programme. But it's not about suing. It's about holding them accountable."

Martin Collins, Assistant Director of Pavee Point Travellers Centre in Dublin, said the Traveller Accommodation Act has failed to deliver. "Of the 2,200 units of Traveller specific accommodation recommended in the 1995 Government Task Force on Travellers only 251 extra units of halting site accommodation has been provided."

Out of the 900 housing units recommended 757 units have been provided. This, said Mr Collins, indicated that the priority of local authorities is 'settling' Travellers into houses, denying their Traveller status.

Mr Collins added that Pavee Point wanted the establishment of a Traveller Accommodation Agency which would take the provision of Traveller accommodation out of the hands of local authorities.

According to David Joyce, legal policy officer of the Irish Traveller Movement, all local authorities have adopted an accommodation programme as required, but many have been slow to implement it.

"Most local authorities are compliant with the letter of the law but not with the spirit of the law."

Mr Joyce, 34, a student of law at the King's Inns and due to graduate as a Barrister next year, said: "The fact is that the programmes are not being implemented," adding: "Each county is also required to have a traveller accommodation consultative committee with traveller representatives. Although those committees have been set up, many have met infrequently and some not at all."

In the meantime, officialdom grinds on. The Department of the Environment is reviewing the traveller accommodation programme and is expected to report in April. The Department of Justice is due to publish its second report on the workings of the Traveller Task Force by the summer. It has also set up what it describes as a "high level senior official group" to focus on traveller accommodation, yet no traveller organisation is represented on that committee.

That's something that comes as no surprise to Bernard Joyce. "Travellers feel more excluded now than they ever did before," he said.