The charred frames of three burned-out mobile homes lay abandoned on the roadside close to the Waterford Crystal factory and showroom. The air was acrid with the smell of smoke.
Nearby an overturned car and a burnt-out Hiace van were surrounded by mounds of rubbish. Four gardaí in stab-proof vests stood outside the pot-holed entrance to the Kilbarry halting site. Inside, a row of council-built "tigín" houses was almost obscured by dozens of caravans, cars and four-wheel-drives. Many of the Travellers appeared eager to talk, though most did not wish to be named in print.
However, Amory Donoghue, a mother of nine, said that "30 drunken and drugged men" had attacked her home - and a number of other houses and caravans - in the early hours of yesterday morning.
They had smashed the windows "with slash hooks, hatchets and bars". Inside a caravan owned by her son Patrick O'Reilly jnr (19), she held up a bandaged hand and said she had "the tops of two fingers took off [ by a slash hook] and they had to be glued back on" at Waterford Regional Hospital.
She said Patrick "was put in hospital with three raps of a slash hook and his head split in two". She was on her way back to the hospital to visit him last evening.
The windows and presses in the caravan were broken. She said the men had also destroyed "€6,000 worth of Waterford glass". Her 2006 Dublin registered Volkswagen car, parked outside and "worth €32,000" had been badly damaged. She and her children, who had just returned "from a holiday in Bundoran to get ready for going back to school", were "shocked" by the early morning events.
Children played in a yard littered with broken glass. No effort had been made to board up or repair any of the broken windows by late afternoon. One of the children pointed to a house and said "Nana lives there". All the windows and the glass front door had been smashed.
Bridget Delaney (41) said her caravan had been "burned out on Sunday". She said her son Michael Delaney (20), who got married in July, had been shot in the legs early yesterday morning. A man who gave his name as "Seán" said "everyone is in a hurry to get out".