Three proposed Traveller-accommodation sites at UCD, Stillorgan Grove and Enniskerry Road in south Dublin have been dropped from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council’s Traveller accommodation programme.
On Monday night councillors voted to adopt a new programme for 2025 to 2029 that dropped the sites, in favour of others at Carrickmines, Booterstown and Nutgrove.
Council officials said the Enniskerry Road, UCD and Stillorgan Grove sites have been included in several previous Traveller accommodation schemes “with no likely prospect of development”. In a report, councillors were told “all the sites are privately owned. In addition, the Enniskerry Road site would require a large retaining wall making the development of the site cost-prohibitive.”
Officials also defended the previous removal of a halting-site designation for lands at Mount Anville, saying: “In July 2019 the Mount Anville site was removed [from the Traveller accommodation programme 2019-2024] by a majority vote of the elected members. In 2022 half the site was sold to the Department of Education for the development of a school”. Officials said plans were well advanced for affordable housing on the remainder of the site.
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Councillors were responding to a legal requirement that they develop a Traveller accommodation programme every five years.
Officials also dismissed the suggestion that the accommodation programme provide for a series of transient sites to cater for the nomadic way of life of Travellers.
Instead, officials said the four Dublin local authorities were jointly working “on a regional response to the provision of transient sites”.
The new plan adopted on Monday night will provide for 51 Traveller accommodation units. These include the construction of 19 new homes, the refurbishment and reallocation of 13 “casual vacancies” and the three new sites that will provide a further 19 new homes.
In an assessment of needs, councillors were told there were 163 Traveller families living in the council’s administrative area of Co Dublin.
As of February this year 64 families were living in standard social housing, while 81 families were living in Traveller-specific accommodation.
Included in the 81 families currently living in Traveller-specific accommodation were 21 adult children. The council said it expected 50 per cent of these (11) will require their own permanent accommodation throughout the lifetime of housing plan.
Some 13 families were currently in homeless accommodation while a further five families were living in private rented accommodation
The plan was adopted by the councillors who voted 21 in favour to 15 against.
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