Council to shut down Travellers’ DIY hardstand

A Traveller family have built their own illegal halting site in Doughiska – complete with a roadway, bays and street lighting.
Five trailers and caravans are parked on the local authority scrubland – adjacent to the official St Nicholas’ halting site on Doughiska Road.
While one caravan has been on the site for several months, a makeshift camp was built over the past week, using a bulldozer and road roller.
Several more members of the family then used low-loaders to move their trailers onto the site.
Some locals have now expressed concerns that the hardstand could become another ‘Dale Farm’ – referring to the infamous Traveller encampment in England which saw a stand-off with police and bailiffs in 2011.
A road is understood to have been built after a delivery of sand and gravel to the site. Outdoor lighting has also been erected.
The people resident there – all members of the same family – are understood to have lost their private rented accommodation recently, and are not on Council Traveller accommodation lists.
They were ordered to vacate the site by noon last Tuesday, but they failed to move on, and the City Council is now in the process of securing a court injunction against them.
A spokesperson for the Galway Traveller Movement representative group had not returned a call to the Galway City Tribune at the time of going to press.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.