‘Wecan’tcopewith travellers’- council

May 1998

As growing numbers of travellers continued to flood into North Wicklow this week, a top county official admitted: ‘We can’t cope’.

County Secretary Brian Doyle was responding to complaints from local residents as yet more travellers moved onto an unauthorised halting site, this time in Greystones,

The number of caravans on the site virtually doubled to 40 as more families arrived at the illegal encampment in a field behind the Burnaby Mills estate.

‘ The site is now a major health hazard. the local stream is being polluted with human waste, the carcass of a dead horse is being left to be eaten by vermin and a pack of dogs has been running around. We are seriously concerned about the health and safety of our children,’ said Burnaby Mills Residents’ Association Secretary Paul Costello.

‘Local people were angry when the travellers originally moved onto the site, but now they are very concerned.’

He added that local residents were looking to Wicklow County Council to take immediate action to have the travellers moved off the site should they fail to comply with an undertaking given to the local authority earlier this month to leave of their own accord by this Sunday, May 31.

Mr Doyle confirmed that the council would indeed be taking action at next Tuesday’s sitting of the Circuit Court in Wicklow Town should they fail to leave the site.

He pointed out that the council had already placed large boulders around the site in an attempt to prevent any further trespass, but these had been removed by the latest arrivals, a number of whom were monitored by gardai as they moved in last Sunday.

He also promised to investigate the health and safety issues raised by residents, but warned there was little the council could do given the scale of the overall problem.

‘We can’t cope. There’s been a huge influx of non-indigenous travelling families into the county over the past three weeks and our hands are tied in dealing with the problem.’