Newly built social homes sitting idle for over 8 months in Wexford

Ignoring the fact that the survey suggests that the issue is that some members of AGS are bigots, how do you see it working that people should be able to express bigoted opinions about other groups in Irish society, and everyone should just take it, while bigots themselves should be exempt from being identified as bigots?

There’s nothing wrong with legitimate criticism of aspects of any culture, there’s a lot wrong with expecting there should be no consequences for doing so. That sort of behaviour is exactly what has led to the current situation Irish society finds itself in now, whereas it is due to the work of people working together has led to travellers being recognised only recently as an ethnic minority who are granted further protection from discrimination in Irish law, while there is still much work to be done in protecting ethnic minorities from the consequences of other peoples bigotry.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable that anyone would expect members of the AGS to do their jobs without letting their prejudices interfere with their professional obligations such as an adherence to the code of ethics of AGS. For anyone who needs a refresher -

https://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Policing_Authority_Code_of_Ethics.pdf/Files/Policing_Authority_Code_of_Ethics.pdf

The problem as always is that ideology and virtue-signalling culture war politics might play well on Twitter, but fall apart almost instantly against the cold hard facts of reality.

Are there good travellers out there? - Sure! Is there a negative view of travellers as a whole? - Yep! But those attitudes are reinforced by the sizeable negative element in that community and said community's refusal to address it, but instead blame the settled community/victims of that negativity

Those are the realities, and all the PC touchy-feely-hug-it-out-victim-narratives in the world won't change that until the traveller community as a whole cleans up its act and makes such behaviour unacceptable.

It's all in the post but I'll give you some examples.

Stop trying to paint themselves as victims, stop trying to shift the blame to others, use their Pavee Point outlet to clearly condemn any incidents that hit the public eye. Work with the Gardai to the fullest extent possible to identify and prosecute offenders, encourage traveller kids to complete school and make the current treatment of traveller girls unacceptable in the community

In short, change must start from within as they have deliberately and conveniently tried to set themselves as an independent part of Irish society (thank you Enda Kenny) in order to shy away from addressing and condemning what would just be considered antisocial and criminal behaviour in any other part of society.

Your attitude on these issues (immigration is the same) always perplexes me if I'm honest. Surely you should not only recognise these things, but be among the strongest advocates for enforcement and reform?

It would be great if they were LET stay in education longer and not sent home at 10AM, check out the link posted earlier.

It's actually comments like yours on threads like this that reinforce those negative attitudes,

Nah I don’t think you’re being an eejit or anything else, media articles are fairly sketchy on the details so I’m only speculating myself too, but the standoff appears to be over the fact that the accommodation being provided is only temporary, not just that it’s unsuitable for the needs of the families involved. and that’s without consideration of the fact that as I alluded to earlier it would cost even more money to try and evict them after they’d been accommodated temporarily and moved in.

I know what you mean by special privileges, but I wouldn’t classify them as special privileges tbh, it’s standard practice that any accommodation provided by local authorities must be suitable for the families needs. There’s nothing prohibits anyone from making demands and engaging in a bit of wishful thinking, it doesn’t mean they’re actually going to get it, but no harm in chancing their arm, or pointing out that the accommodation being provided simply isn’t suitable for their needs. It’s not so long ago we had tenements and bedsits in this country, which I’m glad to see the back of tbh.

It’s the council are wasting enormous amounts of money expecting that they should be able to accommodate people in accommodation which isn’t suitable for their needs, and only then on a temporary basis, in effect disposing themselves of their obligation to provide suitable accommodation. In those circumstances I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect local authorities to stop pissing public funds down the swannee?

That’s not even accounting for the fact that now the council are going to have to pay private security services to monitor the properties to prevent criminal damage or theft of property in properties which are laying idle and unoccupied. Councils all over the country are already sitting like a dog in a manger on idle properties which are being allowed go into a state of disrepair -

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/news/special-report-4000-properties-owned-by-councils-empty-in-a-housing-crisis-41244351.html

Investment in the provision of suitable accommodation takes a bit of forward planning though, and I’m just not sure local authorities are thinking their decisions through, but it would be cynical of me to suggest that councils aren’t interested in recognising that travellers are an ethnic minority with their own distinct culture. Local authorities really do appear to be operating on the basis that they don’t have to consider the needs of the people they’re receiving public funds to provide suitable accommodation for. As long as they are permitted to continue to operate on that basis, we should expect to see more stories in the media of travellers refusing to move into million euro developments as though they’re being made out to be ungrateful bastards, and it’s not the fault of the local authorities for ploughing ahead without thinking and just expecting people looking to be accommodated should be grateful for what they get, even if it is only temporary.

So Andrew, how do they get the traveller kids out of the class at 10am? Do they go in a drag them out kicking and screaming? Would it not upset their non-traveller classmates?

When I was younger I boxed for a few years. There used to be a good few settled traveller kids in a club I was in. They were living in nice houses not too far from the club. I reckon they'd been in houses for a few generations at this stage. They were almost all left school by 15 or 16. I remember one fella was a quiet fella. Sound enough fella but never really put it in in the training even though he always turned up. He went missing all of a sudden for a few weeks when he was 17 and the other lads said he was off after getting married.

You can't blame covid for that. That fella would be still in his early 30's at this stage (to give you a rough idea of the timeline).

It's sad for them, but there is only so much you can do when that is claimed to be part of their much vaunted "culture". I don't think that giving them more choice in picking houses which suited them better would have changed any of that. It would instead have reinforced it. Allowing them to only move into houses where they can be surrounded by their entire family only promotes segregation.

They send them home. Are you criticising them for NOT kicking and screaming now?

Yeah. In your imaginary world where they are going in and identifying the traveller kids and systematically removing all of them from the classes at 10am because they are travellers.

Is this a recent development or have you only become aware of it after schools returned post-pandemic?

And you say yourself - source please?

Not the guff link you posted before which appeared to be about some travellers complaining they weren't getting additional support that others don't get but that they want. And some traveller kid complaining that he wasn't invited to zoom meetings...............it surely wouldn't be beyong any kid to tell their parent a little white lie as to why they were not doing lessons now would it .........

It's not saying what you are claiming. You are claiming,or at least implying, a systematic removal of all traveller kids from all schools at 10am in order to deny them any schooling. And the implication is that this has been going on for a long time because it absolves any traveller of any blame for anything wrong they do - whether that traveller be 18 years old or 80.

Your "do-gooder" plan is not well thought out at all. Unless you want to keep the travellers excluded from education and increasing their social wealth? One of the biggest determinant of a child not going to third level is if they don't know anyone close to them who went to third level. If you want to pack them all into their own little areas to keep it like that then so be it. It is the same thing that they do in the US by packing certain communities into certain areas which then are destined to remain poor.

The issue is that there is a standoff. For the system to function, they appear to have - in general - rules about how many times a person on the list can refuse a housing option. If a person is on the housing list and gets a few offers of houses in Blanchardstown, they can't keep refusing them just because their family is in Swords and they want the handiness of having babysitters nearby. The reason for this is that there would effectively be no list if they did this - people would just sit there and demand until they got the house that suited them. So they can't let people pick and choose.

Similarly here, it would not be fair to allow certain people, on one hand to be claiming discrimination and failure to provide them with services/shelter, and on the other hand being allowed to refuse perfectly good offers of same. It is fair enough to give people some measure of discretion but they cannot be given an absolute right to pick and choose and reject reasonable offers while staying at the top of the queue. In this case it appears that the people do not want to take those houses but want to retain their right to demand housing for them. Which basically means allowing them to dictate whatever they choose to the State.

I referred to a recent SC case for a family which were trying to overturn an injunction keeping them off land which they had previously abandoned. Now at the time their house was burned, they refused council offers for alternate accommodation. They went off for a few years after being provided with private rentals rather than Council ones. After a few years they returned to the site. The judgment overturning the injunction mentioned ECHR I think as the Council had "failed" to provide them housing. 🤔

The Council don't want to move anyone else into the houses because then they can be accused of not providing the houses to the travellers. See court case quoted above. The details are in earlier cases, but basically that family refused many different offers of alternate Council accommodation but refused it. They then got put into private rented accommodation - council offerings were obviously beneath the family and more suitable for the ordinary plebs. They then left that property and went back to the original site after a few years and claimed they had a right to the original property. The Council succeeded in being granted an injunction against their trespass on that site.

I know people who would like to build houses on land that has been in the family for well over 100 years. They aren't allowed to though by planning regulations. Yet a so-called "disadvantaged" group can just rock up to private property and squat on it and do what they like. I know a girl who put a mobile home in her parents garden and the Council served her an enforcement order that she had to remove it. About 15-20 years ago, the issue of caravans arriving onto property that was about to be developed in order to extort money out of the owners or developers was actually a big problem. I think there might have been some legislative changes around that time which were basically to help with that. Somewhat related, there was a similar situation where a certain well known group of families (one of whom was a well known wealthy criminal) got literally millions of Euros each from the State to vacate land and roads near a certain dump that they had been squatting on for years.

So the council is in a bind. If they don't leave the houses vacant there, it allows the families to claim their human rights are being infringed upon by the failure of the Council to provide them with houses. The Council either has to try to stand their ground to have some rules, or else they acquiesce and allow the family to dictate exactly what the Council must provide for them.

Where did I reference ‘all traveller kids’?

I don’t have any plan, btw, do gooder or otherwise.

You cannot have a system where all a recipient has to do is self-declare that the property that they have been granted is "unsuitable". A single mother who is granted a 2 bed in Coolock can't decide that any property other than a 6-bed mansion out in Malahide is unsuitable and therefore she must be given it.

The hierarchy of citizens would be in acceding to the Travellers and accepting that the houses are not good enough for them, but instead putting other citizens into them as they would be good enough for the other citizens. That is a hierarchy when one group is afforded higher standards than others.

As to your second point, that is more or less what I said to Bubblypop. The Council are in a bind because of this "discriminated" crap. So they have to leave the houses sitting there. The family will know this and know what leverage their "status" gives them. No doubt, the houses will be left there for years while we go through the High Court and Supreme Court steps again. All funded by the taxpayer of course.

It's fine. I get the gist of your argument -> Some traveller child didn't want to do their schoolwork and told their parent that they weren't sent a zoom link. Ergo, all travellers must be afforded the right to choose whatever type of accommodation in whatever location they would like and the council must build it for them regardless of the cost.

Andrew, the thread is about houses lying idle and wasted because the intended recipients decide they aren't "suitable" even though the houses look above average.

I don't know why you are bringing in some irrelevant articles about some kids saying they couldn't get their regular additional support during covid - a time when everyone lost out on a lot.