The case of the 54 Roma adults and children who are living on the M50 roundabout near Ballymun in Dublin has escalated into a "major humanitarian crisis" with Romas being racially abused and attacked with eggs, Pavee Point, the Travellers' rights organisation, said yesterday.
It is calling on the Government to intervene and provide emergency accommodation for the group whose youngest member is six weeks old.
Yesterday, the oldest member of the group, a 63-year-old grandmother was rushed to hospital with stomach problems.
It also emerged that a six-month-old baby had been taken into care last Friday after his mother had taken him begging in the city centre.
Most of the group arrived from Romania in May. While Romanian and Bulgarian citizens are free to travel here as EU citizens, they need work permits to get a job and they are not entitled to State benefits or emergency accommodation.
Sara Russell, Pavee Point's Roma co-ordinator said the group had come here believing they could find agricultural work.
When they could not get accommodation, they set up camp on the Swords road but their makeshift shelters were destroyed. Then they began camping both on and beside the busy M50 roundabout.
She said the living conditions were "horrific"for the group who are all part of the extended Rostas family.
"It's an absolute humanitarian crisis . . . the place has just become completely waterlogged. There's no sanitation facilities which is obviously a risk to public health," she added.
She said there had been a number of racist attacks on the camp at night. "People have gone up and shouted profanities at them and thrown eggs and other things at them."
Yesterday more than 21 agencies including Focus Ireland, the Children's Rights Alliance and the Irish Association of Social Workers backed Pavee Point's call for Government intervention.
Philip Watt, director of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, said there was a concern that providing support for these families would be a "pull factor" drawing more Roma groups to Ireland.
"It's a legitimate issue that needs to be addressed by the Government," he said.
"We can't resolve the issues of the Roma community in Romania and Bulgaria in Ireland. We need to put pressure on the Romanian government, the Bulgarian government, to strengthen their strategies to address the problems facing the Roma communities."
He expressed concern at the reports of racist incidents and said Garda protection must be provided "to ensure that such incidents don't escalate into anything more serious. They are bad enough as it is".
A Department of Justice spokesman said "the various Government departments concerned are considering all the issues involved in this matter".
The HSE said it continued to work with all agencies to respond to the needs of the Roma families.
"The current issue is the public safety for these families. We have endeavoured to engage with the local authority to seek to resolve this as quickly as possible," a spokeswoman said.
Fingal County Council said it was liaising with the HSE and gardaí but a spokeswoman said the council could not do anything because the families did not have a right to social benefits and emergency accommodation that people from other EU states had.
