Clare County Council has turned down pleas from residents living near planned Traveller halting sites to provide 24- hour security at the seven proposed permanent halting sites around Ennis.
The council now spends €9,000 a month providing 24-hour security at its temporary emergency halting site in Ennis. Since the site opened last March, the council has paid over €90,000 to a private security firm to police the site. The 24- hour security was put in place as part of a High Court agreement between the council, Travellers and local residents, which allowed the halting site to be built.
Next month, five years after Ennis's only serviced halting site was closed down by a High Court order, precipitating the county's Traveller accommodation crisis, the council will open the first of its permanent sites on the main Ennis-Galway road.
The development, which will accommodate six families is costing over €2 million. If the council is to accede to the residents' demands to provide security at the seven permanent sites planned for around Ennis, it would be left with an annual bill of €750,000.
However, the council's director of housing, Mr Tom Coughlan, said the costs were not sustainable. "We are not providing security. We don't provide it for our housing estates, so there has to be some give-and-take on the issue where we would expect the normal rules of society to be adhered to."
Mr Coughlan said the residents' request for a high level of security "is obviously an issue that requires to be addressed by the Traveller representatives as there appears to be a public perception that the presence of Travellers in an area poses a security risk".
Mr Coughlan added that legal costs arising from the Traveller accommodation issue "are causing us an awful lot of problems". He said one bill from a legal firm for €170,000 concerning a recent High Court case was halved when the council brought the matter to the High Court Taxing Master.
In response to Travellers parking their caravans illegally in car-parks and amenities around Ennis, the county council has placed boulders at those locations.
Mr Coughlan said they would not be removed until the legal status of the recent trespass legislation was resolved. The Housing Miscellaneous Provision Act, 2002, is currently being challenged by a number of Ennis Travellers.
In relation to the provision of transient sites, Mr Coughlan said the council had told the Department of the Environment that the issue should be dealt with on a regional and national basis, noting that there had not been much progress in other local authorities.
