CITY TRIBUNE
City’s halting sites are ‘a failed entity’, according to councillors
Traveller halting sites are a failed entity, according to a number of Galway City councillors.
Several elected members said hardstands and halting sites are not the solution to the overcrowding crisis and accommodation shortage facing city Travellers.
Independent Donal Lyons said: “Hardstands are a failed concept”, and “integration” was the way forward.
Fianna Fáil’s Ollie Crowe said: “Halting sites don’t work”, and a “high percentage of the Traveller community do not want more halting sites”.
Fine Gael’s Frank Fahy said: “Halting sites are a failed entity. In Galway, they have been an unmitigated disaster”. Cllr Pearce Flannery of Fine Gael said: “I don’t agree with halting sites and never will”. He said he “will not support and do not agree with the 1998 Act”.
The 1998 Act is legislation that requires local authorities to provide transient sites for nomadic Travellers, including halting sites.
Cllr John Walsh (FG) said: “Another halting site is not the solution”.
Labour’s Niall McNelis said: “most of us don’t want to see halting sites across the city” but “we have to do the right thing as a human being”. Mayor Noel Larkin said: “We’re not against Travellers but hardstands are causing the problem”.
Jack Keyes, of CENA, an approved housing body, said halting sites can “work like a dream” if properly designed, and if “the right mix of families are on site from the beginning”.
Cllr Mike Crowe (FF) said he would not support another halting site on the east of the city. Cllr Declan McDonnell (Ind) agreed and said 83% of the city’s Travellers are already in the east. Cllr Terry O’Flaherty (Ind) said the problem started in 1975 when Hillside was approved and it shouldn’t have been. She also opposes the Ballybane plan.
Cllrs Ollie Crowe and Pádraig Conneely said it would be “madness” to put a halting site at Keeraun, which is the subject of a Public Accounts Committee investigation. Cllrs Crowe, Collette Connolly (Ind) and Mike Cubbard (Ind) said the site in Westside was “unsuitable”.
Cllr Connolly said she visited halting sites and the Travellers in Salthill told her they “will only move to Keeraun” and not Westside.