The traveller accommodation crisis in Ennis has intensified, with gardai being called to intervene in a dispute between some residents and officials from Clare County Council at a proposed halting site.
Yesterday morning on land adjacent to St Claire's School, a special needs school for children, council workers started clearing land to establish an emergency halting site for the town's Traveller population. However, work was thwarted by a group of local residents who stood in front of council machinery shortly before 11 a.m.
According to a Garda spokesman, gardai were requested to go to the site by the council after heated exchanges. Following a standoff lasting an hour, the residents withdrew after the council agreed to stop work and meet the residents later. Since February 1997 Ennis has had no permanent halting site following the closure of the Drumcliffe site by a High Court order. Since then, Traveller families have lived outside a number of the town's schools, car-parks, the town's main industrial estate, in residential areas and outside the GAA grounds at Cusack Park.
More recently Traveller families have moved outside the offices of Clare County Council and Ennis Urban Council. The reserved parking spaces for the county manager and the council chairman remained occupied by a Traveller family yesterday.
According to the acting assistant county manager, Mr Ger Dollard, the move to establish the temporary halting site on the Galway road had been made under emergency housing legislation because of the situation created by Traveller caravans around Ennis in recent times. It is understood that the site will cater for 13 families.
Mr Dollard said he expected the site to be operational in three weeks if the council did not encounter any problems. A public meeting of residents in the area was being arranged last night.
