Clare County Council members have adopted the county’s new Traveller accommodation plan after some heated debate.At the council’s March meeting, Cllr Martin Conway (FG) said they “have a duty not to play to the gallery and do the right thing”, reports The Irish Times.
A number of councillors said that members of the settled community were being discriminated against in the new Clare Traveller Accommodation Plan. The council intends to spend €8.8 million to construct three housing schemes as part of the plan. Figures in the plan show that only four Traveller families out of a total of 130 in Co Clare have been able to provide housing for themselves from their own resources.
In the new plan, the council has identified the need to accommodate an additional 123 Traveller families in mainly three centres in the county, Ennis, Shannon and Ennistymon, in the next five years. According to the plan for the period 2009-2013, it has established that 88 indigenous Traveller families are in need of permanent accommodation.
