Margaret and John O’Reilly and their six children, aged between two and 16, share one bedroom in a tiny house scarred throughout with foul-smelling, black mould.
Chantelle (14), Nona (11), Terry (5) and Mick (8), sleep in the bottom bunk bed. “On top is my 16-year-old, John. They have no choice to share because there is nowhere else to put them,” says Ms O’Reilly.
Their two-year-old daughter shares the couple’s bed. “The bedclothes get damp and even them curtains, every so often you have to tear them down and throw them away,” she says showing hundreds of mildew spots on the blind and window frames.
Black-green mould extends from the ceiling’s corners and about a foot up the walls, over rotting skirting. A blanket of mould covers a skylight recess in the shower and utility room; tiles are falling from the walls and paint flakes from the ceiling.
The back bedroom window does not open fully, blocked by a 2m high concrete-block wall about half a metre away from the house. “How would we escape if there was a fire?” she asks.
“It’s no different from when you visited last time,” Ms O’Reilly tells The Irish Times. “Every one of my children suffers with bronchitis and asthma since they were born. The council never done nothing to fix it.”
The house, at Kilbarry on the outskirts of Waterford city, is one of 12 dwellings at one of most chronically dilapidated Traveller housing schemes in the State.
The Irish Times visited a decade ago, finding homes in the same condition as this week – smelling and feeling damp, mouldy throughout, cold, draughty and without safe fire escapes from bedrooms.
Each house visited has a tiny galley kitchen off small sitting rooms, and none has space for a table and chairs. Families eat meals on their laps or sitting on floors, and children have no table on which to do homework.
One of the children The Irish Times met in 2015 died two years ago by suicide, on the site. Aged 15, they were described by their school as “very bright, very good at maths”. They shared their one-bedroom home with parents and eight siblings.
“The conditions is affecting the young people’s health in a big way,” said Karen O’Reilly, resident and member of the Waterford City and County Council’s local Traveller accommodation consultative committee (LTACC).
With us is Dinah O’Reilly, who is holding her 13-month old grandson. She shows the damp bedroom she shares with her husband, the “drowned bedclothes” and a cupboard of medication and a nebuliser her husband uses. “He suffers very bad with COPD and his lungs,” she says.
Glancing down to her grandson she says: “When I was working with the project here 21 years ago they [the council] brought us in, showed us all they were going to do for Kilbarry. I had his father, [then] a one-year-old in my arms. Are we going to be here in 20 years with this child’s children still in these conditions?”
Also among the neighbours is another Margaret O’Reilly (63), whose husband Michael died last year. She is recovering from cancer, and tries hard to maintain her home, with ornaments, framed photographs and religious pictures. It is damp and cold, however. “After cancer treatment in Dublin, I am very tired after that. There is no comfort here. It does get me down. Your home is everything.”
Each household pays the council rent and for electricity – between €30 and €100 a week, depending on their energy-use.
The council-managed site, which dates back more than 40 years, has been the subject of promises of improvement since 2000 and redevelopment since 2009.
The 12 houses are set well back from the main Kilbarry Road, fronted by a large green. They were built in 2000, costing €1.5 million, and have been refurbished since.
The driveway into the site has large, deep potholes filled with filthy water. Rubbish including broken furniture is strewn on the green – much of it dumped by passersby say residents – where horses graze.
Tigíns with basic facilities were built here in the 1970s. From the late 1990s, influxes of families led to overcrowding and antisocial behaviour. By the mid-2000s there were about 40 families.
In September 2007, in a controversial mass eviction by the council, more than 30 families were removed. Though many experienced homelessness, the three extended families remaining are now well-settled and stable.
Plans for landscaping and a community building in the council’s first Traveller Accommodation Programme (TAP) 2000-2004, were not completed for “a variety of reasons”, including “extensive vandalism and malicious damage to the site” and “ongoing management and maintenance” issues, said the council at the time.
The 2005-2008 programme said the council would “engage with the residents of Kilbarry ... [to] develop solutions to the very real problems experienced by the residents”.
The 2009-2013 programme said plans to demolish the houses and develop two six-house schemes were “awaiting approval from the Department of the Environment”.
The 2014-2018 programme said: “It was proposed in the Traveller Accommodation Programme 2009-2013 to redesign Kilbarry and create a 12-house group housing scheme ... However, due to an unprecedented decline in funding available from the National Capital Programme, the scheme was not approved.”
The most recent TAP, from 2019-2024, said: “The Minister of State for housing visited Kilbarry in 2018 and gave a commitment to look favourably on any funding application regarding Kilbarry. The council is currently working on plans to redevelop the Traveller accommodation in Kilbarry.”
A spokeswoman for Waterford City and County Council said plans were in train to “supply appropriate housing” at Kilbarry. There had been a number of workshops with tenants, she said, allowing tenants to input into design.
A first stage application was submitted to the department’s Traveller accommodation support unit in July 2024.
“On October 2nd 2024, the department responded with several queries. A meeting between [the council] and the department took place on November 6th 2024, and a formal response was submitted by the [council] on December 2nd 2024.”
The council anticipates a “formal response” to its application “shortly”, she added.
Resident and LTACC member Karen O’Reilly says: “No one here is looking for huge houses or luxuries, just to be safe and healthy, and in culturally appropriate housing.” Residents want to work with the council to make Kilbarry work “for everyone”, but fear disappointment after decades of non-delivery, she says.
Bernard Joyce, director of the Irish Traveller Movement (ITM), says “ongoing failure to deliver desperately needed, safe housing” at sites such as Kilbarry underlines how the system, whereby local authorities draw up TAPs with department funding to deliver them, is “not working”.
A recent ITM analysis found 30 of the 31 local authorities’ most recent TAPs identified 2,871 households needed Traveller accommodation, but just 449 units were provided.
More than two decades since the 1998 Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act set out how accommodation would be delivered, “chronic stagnation” remained, says Mr Joyce.
“It’s unacceptable that children should grow to be adults in inhumane conditions, passing trauma intergenerationally to their children. It’s almost normalised and is then lain at the door of Travellers, as if we choose this.
“No other minority community would be held responsible for such systemic failure.”
Among recommendations in a 2019 report from the Government’s Traveller accommodation expert group was that a national Traveller accommodation authority (NTAA) be established, to oversee local authorities’ delivery.
It cited “the need for active and ongoing monitoring of the planning and provision of Traveller accommodation and intervention when these functions are not being adequately performed”.
As the 31 local authorities prepare to adopt their 2025-2029 programmes, the ITM says a national authority “is the only show” if the Government is “serious about delivery”.
A spokesman for the Department of Housing said a programme board was overseeing implementation of the expert group’s recommendations. This board was giving “active consideration” to recommendations on “governance structures”.
Terms of reference had been finalised for the Housing Agency to examine how such an authority would work. “The department is engaging with the Housing Agency on foot of the terms of reference,” he said.
Capital funding to local authorities to provide Traveller-specific accommodation was fully drawn down over the past five years, amounting to over €100 million, he added.
