In Finglas West, Travellers worry that future redevelopment could split families and undermine their way of life

Kathleen Keenan was 14 years old when her family first came to live in this area near Finglas West, she says. It was 1972 or thereabouts.

They camped in a field now built over by the nearby Avila Park estate, group housing for Travellers.

“My father and mother lived in the field over there,” says Keenan, sitting in her home in St Joseph’s Park in Dunsink Lane and gesturing in front of her. “It was only a field that time.”

Kathleen is sitting in her living room on a silver sofa. Beside her is a shiny silver lamp and a vase with pink and white roses. Across from her, her sister-in-law Winnie Keenan sits below a picture of the Virgin Mary.

Back when they moved to the area, there were no laws to prevent Travellers from camping on public land, she says, so they had more freedom. “We didn’t depend on the council for anything.”

Laws like the trespass legislation introduced in 2001, and housing acts, have effectively prohibited the Travellers’ nomadic way of life, making it a criminal offence to camp on any land including public land and roads.

Keenan came and went from this area near Finglas West over the years, she says. She spent a lot of time in Manchester, but moved home for good in 1998.

Now she lives in the St Joseph’s Park halting site on Dunsink Lane, a cluster of mobile homes off a rural road, where she pays rent to Dublin City Council, who manage it, even though the land is in Fingal.

In 2022, Fingal County Council, which owns a vast tract of land around Dunsink Lane, carried out a feasibility study for a major redevelopment here, pointing to the possibility of thousands of new homes.

A council spokesperson didn’t directly answer questions about what would happen, if the lands are redeveloped, to the many Travellers living in five halting sites in the area.

Kathleen has three brothers and four nephews living in St Joseph’s Park, as well as cousins. “They are trying to get rid of the Travellers and put them in settled houses,” she says. “If we integrate then our culture will be gone.”

Living beside extended family members is an essential part of Traveller culture, say both Winnie and Kathleen. If the council only offers “settled housing”, they want to know if they have any legal rights to resist assimilation.

Simmering plans

Fingal County Council owns around 1,000 acres of land in Dunsink, in between Finglas West and Blanchardstown, not far from the M50 and around 7km from Dublin city centre.

This land could accommodate “a new urban neighbourhood”, according to the council’s February 2022 study.

There are five Traveller accommodation sites altogether on those lands, the study also says.

Martin Collins, director of Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre, says he used to live in the Dunsink area, years ago – when there was a large dump in the area.

“It was okay for Travellers to be living beside a big dump with all the toxic waste,” he says. But now the dump is closed and the council says the site is suitable for development.

Some Traveller families who had been living on the land unofficially for more than 12 years had adverse possession rights, says Collins. Those families got compensation and moved away, he says.

But the many families who live in official Dublin City Council-run sites remain. “Now the concern is that those families will be forced to move out of the area where they and their parents and grandparents have lived for 50 years,” says Collins.

They will be offered some form of accommodation since they are council tenants, he says, but there is no guarantee they will be offered Traveller-specific accommodation.

Collins fears that those families will be split up and offered standard housing instead. He has asked both Fingal County Council and Dublin City Council for assurances, he says, but he hasn’t received any.

A spokesperson for Fingal County Council didn’t directly answer questions about how Travellers living in the area would be re-accommodated.

“Dunsink’s strategic location provides significant opportunities to be considered in terms of future use, which is why the Council recently carried out a Dunsink Feasibility Study,” said the spokesperson.

“It is acknowledged that the current infrastructural constraints on these lands require further detailed investigation that should inform future decisions in relation to the development of these lands,” he says.

Any future development would require a masterplan, such as a local area plan or a strategic development zone or similar, he says.

Living with family

Inside Kathleen Keenan’s mobile home there are shiny silver ornaments, pink and white roses, and silver-framed family photos.

The contrast with the outside of the estate, which looks dilapidated and abandoned, is stark.

Kathleen says she is tired of asking the council to paint the wall in the communal part of the estate. It is black from mildew. On the way into the estate, boulders are stacked beside a derelict building.

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to queries sent Monday about consultation with residents of St Joseph’s Park and issues regarding the upkeep of the estate.

The council definitely needs to do some maintenance work on the halting site urgently, say both women. But this is their home and they don’t want to move.

“We’re all just one big extended family,” says Kathleen. Traveller women look after each other’s children as they do their own, she says.

“Our brothers’ or our sisters’ children are like our own children,” says Kathleen, as Winnie nods in agreement.

A lot of her neighbours cannot read and write, says Kathleen. That makes it easy for the council to ignore them, she says.

“I think there is something in the pipeline,” says Winnie.

Around six years ago, council officials started to ask them to move out. There were meetings with council officials and some younger couples wanted to take the houses, she says. But the older people, the long-term residents, didn’t want to go.

She doesn’t intend on going. “I tell you what, you will never get me out of this bay,” she says. She hasn’t heard much since.

They could build group housing for the existing tenants on this site like the ones in Avila Park, which would allow the extended family to stay together, says Kathleen.

“They’re pretending that they’re helping us by giving us a house,” she says. “They want to build all settled houses here.”

Winnie says she feels that if major changes like this were planned for an area where settled people live, they would be consulted. There has been no communication from the council, she says. “You feel you are just forgotten about.”

Both women want to know what their legal rights are if the council decides to redevelop these lands.

Can the council force them into mainstream or settled housing? Or do they have a right to insist on Traveller-specific accommodation, and remain together?

“I’d prefer if they were upfront,” says Kathleen.

“I wouldn’t go,” says Winnie.