The controversial barrier across Dunsink Lane in Finglas, Dublin, was removed by Dublin City Council and the lane reopened to traffic at lunchtime yesterday. Tim O'Brien reports.
Travellers and members of the 400-strong local population queued in their cars and stood and cheered as council workers tidied up the remaining elements of the barricade.
"It cost them a million, now look at it," said one of a number of Traveller women who were talking beside a line of cars.
The women, who declined to be identified, laughed when the subject of the near-riots over the past week were mentioned.
"We've been imprisoned here. We have the right to get out and go shopping. Who had the right to put that barrier there?"
Questioned about an incident at Elmgreen Golf Course, which left 11 of the greens destroyed at an estimated cost of € 60,000, as well as further damage to neighbouring Dunsink Observatory, the women turned away and continued talking among themselves.
Beyond the council workers could be seen the shops and facilities of Finglas, which Travellers complained had become an eight-mile round-trip when the concrete barrier was in place.
One woman with small children and a buggy told The Irish Times the barrier was an act of "apartheid" and said settled people from Finglas had stoned the Travellers, firing missiles over the barrier after it had been erected.
Of the council, she said: "They never asked us what we thought because they don't care what Travellers think."
A spokeswoman for the Garda Press Office later said that a "mobile presence" was in place at either end of the lane and would remain in place pending a reassessment of the situation this morning.
A spokeswoman for Dublin City Council said it hoped the removal of the barrier would bring to an end the almost nightly disturbances which have seen petrol bombs and stone-throwing amid clashes between gardaí and local Travellers.
A temporary barrier is now to be installed at the opposite end of the laneway near to the entrance to the old city dump in an attempt to deal with the council's concerns about illegal dumping and the sale of diesel in the area.
It will remain until "agreed new engineering works are put in place to restrict illegal dumping in the lane", according to a two-paragraph agreement worked out between the council and Traveller representatives earlier in the week.