Council manager says this time it’s really going to build more Traveller accommodation in the city, honest

Dublin city councillors agreed to a new Traveller Accommodation Programme at their December monthly meeting on Monday night, but alongside a chorus of the usual complaints about how the last plan had failed to deliver.

The plan – which runs from 2025 to 2029 – sets a target of providing 170 new homes for Travellers, by assigning 100 homes in standard social housing, buying 30 homes, and building 40 homes in Traveller-specific accommodation.

These new Traveller-specific homes would be on existing Traveller-housing sites. The plan fails to identify any new sites for Traveller-specific accommodation, limiting options for the next generation of Traveller families who may wish to live in culturally appropriate accommodation, but find there is none.

The council also intends to carry out major renovations at 11 existing Traveller accommodation sites, and to roll out its retrofit programme to all group housing schemes.

Almost four years ago, a group of councillors called a special meeting to force a debate on the lack of council progress on new Traveller housing, and push for ways to upend that.

Yet on Monday night, some councillors again pointed to how the last plan for accommodation had again been left largely on paper.

As of June 2024, there were 51 Traveller households in homeless accommodation, while another 82 households were living in overcrowding on existing sites and 24 more on basic sites, according to the Traveller Accommodation Programme.

So, councillors again queried why progress on long-awaited regeneration projects is so slow and raised concerns about conditions and maintenance of Traveller homes.

Travellers are also being forced into mainstream social homes and rentals because Traveller-specific homes aren’t being built, they said.

“It’s great to have a plan,” says Sinn Féin Councillor Anthony Connaghan. “But I’m on the Local Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee over 10 years and there has been zero delivery in that time.”

Council housing manager Mick Mulhern said that Dublin City Council had failed to deliver on the last programme.

But he promised to direct more council staff to work on Traveller accommodation projects and said the council has recruited more contractors to do maintenance.

Delays, delays, delays

On Monday night, several councillors asked what is causing the delay to the council delivering long-standing projects for Travellers at Labre Park in Ballyfermot and Avila Park in Finglas.

Dublin City Council has been promising to redevelop Labre Park for 25 years and to build three new homes in Avila Park since at least 2014.

Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan said that works at Labre Park were not held up due to objections from the local community or councillors but by delays in the Department of Housing approving funding for the plans.

“It appears that there is a level of bureaucracy in the Customs House,” he said. “That the red tape is preventing progress.”

Councillors are in support of new Traveller accommodation, and the next Minister for Housing should look at streamlining procurement to deliver Traveller accommodation more efficiently, said Doolan.

Said Social Democrats Councillor Mary Callaghan: “Our delivery is a shame and a disgrace to us on this council and I think we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

She asked for regular reports to meetings of the full council. Mulhern agreed to report back as part of another regular report that goes to councillors, called the social housing supply report.

“We need to have a relentless focus on the delivery of Traveller accommodation,” said independent Councillor John Lyons.

The council is breaching people’s human rights and needs to identify new sites, he said.

Mulhern acknowledged that the council hadn’t delivered any new Traveller accommodation during the last plan, but promised changes going forward.

“The big thing we are trying to figure out now is how we allocate enough internal resources to drive those projects forward,” said Mulhern. “There hasn’t been that level of ability.”

They are working on an update for council CEO Richard Shakespeare on how many extra staff they would need, he said. “It’s safe to say we will be looking to put in additional resources.”

Maintaining existing homes

Several councillors said that the council is also failing to adequately maintain existing Traveller accommodation.

Green Party Councillor Ray Cunningham said that conditions in some Traveller accommodation is “intolerable and not something that would be acceptable in the settled community”.

He thanked officials for accepting that the previous programme was a failure and committing to improve things.

Connaghan, the Sinn Féin councillor, said maintenance had improved for a while but seems to have slipped again. Mulhern agreed that was the case.

The council had previously contracted one company to do maintenance for all Traveller accommodation across the city.

“And for whatever reason that contractor wasn’t delivering on the scale and the extent of the works that were required,” said Mulhern

But they’ve changed that now, he says. “As of today we have just established a new framework. We now have a pool of 12 contractors.”

From the middle of next year, maintenance should be significantly better, said Mulhern.

The choice

Traveller-specific accommodation – usually halting sites or group housing schemes – allows Travellers to live together in extended family groups. It’s also sometimes called culturally appropriate accommodation.

That right to live in culturally appropriate accommodation is being eroded by councils failing to deliver on commitments to build Traveller-specific homes.

Connaghan, the Sinn Féin councillor, said that the Dublin City Council Traveller Accommodation Programme was misleading, when it pointed to a lot of Traveller families expressing an interest in standard housing.

They don’t have many options said Connaghan.

“There should be a caveat in there because there is no Traveller-specific accommodation available,” said Connaghan. “You have a choice, you either go homeless or you go into standard accommodation.”

Mulhern said that the council has now recognised that issue in the report. “We did include a caveat […] because we haven’t built Traveller accommodation people have gone into socially allocated homes.”

He may be referring to a paragraph that doesn’t quite say that.

“It is acknowledged by the Council that no new homes were built during the Traveller Accommodation Programme 2019-2024,” says the report, “and noted that Traveller Families may have preference for Traveller Specific Accommodation, and TAU [Traveller Accommodation Unit] will endeavour to accommodate all housing options.”

Lyons, the independent councillor, said the council still needs to identify new sites for Traveller-specific accommodation to reverse that trend of pushing people into standard housing.

“My fear is if we are not identifying significantly sizeable new parcels of land, then I think all we are doing, Mick, is managing the situation,” said Lyons to Mulhern at the meeting.

Restricting supply means more and more Travellers are forced to take up standard accommodation, he said, “and that is in my mind problematic”.