Hard questions - Security bill at halting site

The cost of 24/7 security on a Cork City halting site, while it was being built, was €672,000.

The overall cost of the state-of-the-art facility was €5m. The security bill ran to around €1,800 a day and it included paying private security contractors and non-public overtime to maintain a round-the-clock garda presence at the €5m St Anthony’s Park scheme in Hollyhill, which is adjacent to an older, overcrowded halting site.

Almost as soon as work began on the project, gardaí had to be deployed over claims that construction and city council workers had been intimidated.

The new site, spread over two acres, was opened in June. A new community centre built on the site has been regularly vandalised and repaired but it is now closed while officials cost a new round of repairs after the latest bout of vandalism.

At a time when the cash-strapped local authority is cutting services in other areas and trying to cope with a housing crisis, a bill such as this raises all sorts of questions, some of them uncomfortable, all of them challenging.