Residents of an English village have visited the town of Rathkeale in Co Limerick to try to find out why Irish Travellers have moved into their area.
Residents of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire have said there could soon be 5,000 Travellers living on 500 acres of land in the village.
They claim the encampment has been established, largely without planning permission, and that most of the Travellers are from Rathkeale.
They say that Irish Travellers are buying up land in Cottenham, camping on it, and then applying for retrospective planning permission, obliging the local authority to provide services.
They have mounted a campaign to safeguard villagers' interests. Their fact-finding mission to Co Limerick aims to examine how Travellers can arrive at a village, take it over, and then expect to be welcomed. Villagers have been threatened with jail because they refused to pay council taxes in protest at the encampment.
A spokesman for the Cottenham Residents Association, Mr Terry Brownbill, said they were visiting Rathkeale to learn why Irish Travellers choose to settle in particular areas.
"We would like to know why Travellers feel it necessary to invade small communities around Britain. We have been accused of being racist because we don't accept extreme anti-social behaviour and we want to know why." The visitors intend also to compare Rathkeale with Adare, to identify factors which make towns of similar size, only a few miles apart, so different on a social level.