The "most difficult" meeting in Fiona O'Malley's political career was at a residents meeting in south county Dublin, where the issue of the provision of Traveller accommodation was being discussed.
The Progressive Democrats TD for Dún Laoghaire had been a councillor on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in 2000 when she attended a meeting with residents in the Mount Anville area, she told a group of transition year students yesterday.
Ms O'Malley and other politicians attended a debate organised by the students of Blackrock College who have completed a project, "Bridging the Gap", on relations between settled and Traveller communities.
Ms O'Malley said a location for a Traveller halting site had been identified in the Mount Anville area in 1985, but that residents had fought its delivery since then.
"It was the most difficult meeting I was ever at in my career. The residents told me they had resisted the halting site since 1985 and by God they were going to keep on resisting it." It remains undelivered.
Ms O'Malley said the experience underlined how the question of Traveller accommodation was "always a hot issue". However, there had been "good progress" in the provision of Traveller accommodation, she said, since the first Traveller Accommodation Act, 1998, which mandates every local authority in the State to provide such accommodation. This had forced local authorities to address the issue and "to get out there and sell it to the public".
Green Party TD Ciarán Cuffe said he would agree with calls from Traveller representative groups that they should be granted status as an ethnic minority. Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has said this would not be granted.
"They have their own dialect or 'cant', their own culture and traditions and I do not think it would cost a lot to allow them that status," he said.
Fianna Fáil TD Barry Andrews said he had not heard persuasive arguments for such a move. "I would think there are sufficient safeguards in legislation, in the Equal Status Act for instance that mean we don't have to go down that road."
