Report pinpoints sites for Traveller housing

A call has been made for comprehensive consultations with local councillors across the city on a revised Traveller Accommodation Plan which was adopted in principle two years ago.

That plan identified a number of possible sites across the city and pledged that Travellers would be accommodated on a site in each of the three city Wards within a five-year period. There’s only three years left in that programme.

Recent events on the Headword Road where a temporary halting site accommodating 13 families has been refused permission by An Bord Pleanala has added to the urgency of the Plan.

Councillors did not get around to discussing an updated report re the 2014-2018 Traveller Accommodation Plan at last month’s council meeting.

On Monday councillors insisted that before the Plan be put in action every councillor be given an opportunity for proper consultations in each area that would involve council executives and residents.

That updated report by Tom Connell, Director of Services for Housing, takes into consideration the overall housing urgency for Travellers who were to be accommodated in either halting stands, social housing or group housing schemes.

Since the Traveller Accommodation Plan was adopted two years ago, a Traveller Accommodation Officer has been appointed and the number of sites have been narrowed in each Ward – a move that has irked councillors because of the lack of consultation involved.

Cllr Donal Lyons said he was against hard stands as they hadn’t worked in the past and he would much prefer to see the site at Ballymoneen Road developed for social housing to address the current housing list, which now stands at 4,500.

That particular site, which cost €11million, he said had been greatly diminished because of the proposed Outer City Bypass and a Special Area of Conservation, which means only a small part of it can be developed.

For a higher resolution map, click here

For more on the hardstands discussion, see this week’s Galway City Tribune