Trespass law used mercilessly against Traveller community
This measure tapped into an anti-Traveller vein in the political establishment and sailed onto the Statute Book with the fulsome support of the government and the Fine Gael party.
The upshot of this law is the appalling spectacle of the full apparatus of the state coming down mercilessly on Traveller families, regardless of the consequences for their health or the welfare of their children.
Judging by recent events in Cork, the people who predicted the worst have been proved right.
On Wednesday last, gardaí evicted 30 people from, of all places, a halting site in Mahon. The Cork City Council, which ordered the evictions, claimed these families were breaking the law and they (the council) were thus entitled to shift them under the 2002 Act.
A family with 10 children had their home towed away to a pound in Carrignavar, miles outside the city. The children had to lock themselves in another caravan to prevent it too from being forcibly removed and they were left on the side of the road without shelter.
The council claims there is a halting site bay available for them in Dundalk.
This is just one more episode in what appears to be an increasingly hardline policy directed against Travellers in Cork in recent times.
Last winter on the Commons Road outside the city a Traveller family was terrified by a dawn raid of individuals in heavy machinery who dumped tons of earth around their caravans. The local authorities denied all knowledge or responsibility for this at the time.
Cork is now encircled by a ring of massive stone boulders and earthen embankments, put in place to deter Travellers from entering the city or its environs.
The trespass laws represent yet another addition to this arsenal of exclusion and their hasty application is in stark contrast to the tortuously slow implementation of the 1998 Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act.
Cork is currently preparing for the European Capital of Culture in 2005. As part of its celebration of cultural diversity, maybe the city authorities could aspire to a humane recognition of the accommodation needs of this vulnerable ethnic minority and cease the heavy-handed tactics deployed under the 2002 Housing Act.
Cathal O'Connell,
Military Hill,
Cork.
