Traveller families plead with Council to be allowed stay

The families living in a ‘DIY’ halting site in Doughiska have pleaded with Galway City Council to allow them stay … until they get local authority housing.
There are seven adults and seven children living on the site – including a three-and-a-half year old deaf girl who has just had an implant operation to help her hear.
The extended members of the Barrett family were ordered by the Council to vacate the local authority wasteland last week, but are refusing to move.
And the Galway Traveller Movement has said the family are victims of the Council’s housing crisis. The Barretts have been living on the site since February, but it’s understood the majority of complaints were only made to the Council in recent weeks after they brought sand and gravel, as well as a digger, onto the site to build a roadway.
They were forced to move to the unauthorised halting site after a bank repossessed the properties in which they were tenants.
Nora Barrett told the Galway City Tribune of the family’s plight, and has pleaded for a meeting with the Council’s Chief Executive Brendan McGrath to help resolve their housing problem.
Four of her 11 sons are living in the halting site, and of those three are married with children and one set to marry in July. There are seven children – aged from seven months up to five years old – on the site.
“All my sons wanted to do was to make the site safer for the kids. The only reason the gravel was brought in was because it was three feet high in muck, stones everywhere and rodents.
“It was waste ground, and dangerous for the kids. They were sustaining a lot of injuries, falling and tripping. It’s for the well-being of the kids.
“We didn’t know we were breaking the law. It was just putting down gravel and clearing the stones for the kids, because they were sustaining injuries,” said Nora.
For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.