EUROPEAN housing ministers were told yesterday that almost one third of Ireland's travelling community were still living in "dire conditions" on the roadside or in temporary sites.
Ms Liz McManus, Minister of State for housing and urban renewal, told her EU colleagues it was one of her priorities to implement the Government's five year National Strategy for Traveller Accommodation.
While making no mention of middle class opposition to new halting sites, she said: "The provision of good quality accommodation, which respects their traditions, is the key to helping travellers to overcome social exclusion."
Ms McManus, who was chairing an informal two day meeting of EU housing ministers at Dublin Castle, said she also wanted to "break the cycle of homelessness and to help homeless persons reintegrate into the community".
More new houses than ever would be built in the Republic this year an "all time record" of 32,000 units - and she was particularly pleased that this would include 10,000 households who could not meet their own needs.
The Minister admitted that previous programmes had "left us with large public housing estates" where there were now "pernicious" social problems. As a result, new local authority housing concentrated on smaller infill schemes.
She noted that local authorities were also buying private houses to accommodate their tenants and that voluntary housing associations were playing a "greatly expanded" role in meeting the needs of low income households.
Britain's housing minister, Mr David Curry, said there had been a dramatic fall in the number of people sleeping rough, from more than 1,000 in 1990 to around 290 due to his government's Rough Sleepers Initiative.
"This is the only documented decrease in any country of which I am aware", he told the meeting. "Realistic, well devised and comprehensive programmes . . . are better than general pieties about the need to do something".
EU ministers attending the Dublin Castle session were taken on a tour of the Salvation Army's Granby Centre, off Parnell Square, and also to the Focus Housing Association's scheme at Stanhope Green, off Stoneybatter.
