Plans drawn up to provide Traveller housing

Plans have been drawn up to provide proper housing for 103 Traveller families in Co Cork over the next four years.

A draft report on Traveller accommodation needs compiled by the county council, in consultation with Traveller groups, proposes that ideally they should be placed in conventional homes. However, there are cases where specific families, because of their culture, may require group housing, and there are other families that are seeking to access authorised halting sites.

The council’s directorate of housing carried out a survey of Travellers families to identify those most in need and the areas in which they were currently living. A quarter of the respondents said they had lived in the county all their lives and another quarter said they had been in Cork for 20 years or more, while half indicated they had arrived in the county 11 or less years ago.