Rats are such a problem on a Travellers' halting site in Tallaght, Co Dublin, "that the dogs have got fed up chasing them," according to Mr Damien Peelo.
Mr Peelo is a community development officer at the Maelruan's temporary halting site, opposite the offices of South Dublin County Council, where up to 30 Traveller families live. Some have been there for 20 years. There was no electricity on the site for over three weeks before Christmas and one family still had no supply. Interruptions in the supply were regular, he added.
He said the Travellers were willing to pay for electricity to ensure a better supply. They would also pay for a proper rubbish disposal service. They would do so from income earned through work and businesses, Mr Peelo said.
Each bay on the site, which can service as many as four families each, has one cold tap and a "block" toilet with no lighting.
Gravel on the site was over mud and water, resulting in such primitive conditions that one sick child was detained in hospital for most of its first three years because medical authorities refused to allow it return.
Mr Peelo called on county council officials to discuss their real needs with the Travellers. There seemed to be a reluctance to acknowledge that the Travellers had a separate culture, he said. What was happening was an attempt at "a subtle form of assimilation," Mr Peelo claimed.
The Travellers are preparing suggestions for South Dublin County Council following a promise from its chairman, Councillor Stanley Laing. He said yesterday on the RTE Radio One programme Today with Vincent Browne that there would be improvements on the site within a month.
Meanwhile South Dublin County Council Sinn Fein Councillors Sean Crowe and Mark Daly have accused Mr Browne of "cheap and sensational journalism" and said that, "in a browbeating exercise (he had) attacked all and sundry".
They protested that neither of them was contacted beforehand and suggested that "perhaps RTE and Vincent Browne should look at the mote in their own eye and question why Tallaght has 40 per cent of the Travellers and halting sites in Co Dublin."
