A number of Traveller families in Co Clare are refusing to vacate a rat-infested halting site to move into new €330,000 homes provided by a local authority.
Clare County Council started court proceedings yesterday to remove three Traveller families from the unserviced Beechpark halting site.
The council has recently spent €4 million to accommodate 12 families from the Beechpark site in two new halting sites.
Two of the bungalows on one of the sites remained vacant yesterday, however. The families refused to move, citing incompatibility with Travellers already accommodated there.
The Beechpark site is due to be demolished as it lies in the path of the €190 million Ennis bypass.
One of the Travellers refusing to move, Mr Pat McDonagh, said the council had been made aware for a long time that they were not compatible with a family already on the site.
"We were due to move into a four-bedroomed home. We couldn't ask for more. At the moment, we are living in a 22-ft caravan. The halting site has no running hot water, no showers and is full of rats.
"We are living in Third World conditions here. But I would prefer to live on the side of the road than move into the new site because we are not compatible with people already there."
Mr McDonagh said the council had already issued him with documentation threatening to jail him if he and his family do not move. He asked the council to provide an alternative to the home being offered, but had been refused.
Mr McDonagh claimed that the council does not have accommodation for one of the three families concerned.
Mr Martin Collins of Pavee Point said the council should be obliged to take on board Traveller concerns when there is a history of conflict among families.
The Beechpark site was opened in 1973 as a temporary site, but has remained in place for the past 31 years accommodating families far in excess of what it was designed to accommodate and the council has faced many calls over the years for its closure.
The council's Director of Service for Housing, Mr Tom Coughlan, yesterday confirmed that the council will be going to the Circuit or High Court to move the remaining three families out of the halting site in order to close it down.
"The matter is urgent. We have to get the matter determined as there are Travellers on the roadside and we can't allow vacant houses remain empty where there are Travellers in need of accommodation."
Mr Coughlan added: "It is a pity that the Traveller families won't move into their new homes because the council would like the Traveller accommodation programme be carried out with the co-operation of the Travellers, rather than in spite of them."
He said the council has been called on for many years to close the site by Travellers and Traveller representatives."This is what we are now doing yet we are being prevented from doing so by the Travellers who refuse to move on."
Mr Coughlan claimed that the Travellers' reasons for refusing to move have changed a numbers of times. "First, it was the location, then it was the height of the walls, then it was rent, now it is compatibility. It is very frustrating."
