Fine Gael's proposal to toughen the laws against illegal Traveller camps would be challenged before the Constitution if it ever became law, the Irish Traveller Movement has warned.
It strongly disputed the party's contention that large numbers of Travellers are moving around the country every summer to trade and to force money from landowners keen to get them off their land.
The movement said there were just 200 trading families, many of whom would be prepared to pay for trading pitches and skips to take away rubbish if the local authorities would agree to provide them.
Questioning the need for any new legislation, the Movement said the Traveller Accommodation Act (1998) already gave tough, wide-ranging powers to local authorities.
"They have used them very frequently without providing the necessary accommodation," said Ms Grβinne O'Toole, the movement's national accommodation worker.
She accused local authorities of failing to meet their obligations. Just 210 local authority houses, and 41 more in group schemes, had been provided for Travellers since 1998. The target, however, was 2,300 homes.
"We are in a housing crisis. Traditional halting places have gone, where they were not a nuisance to anybody. Boulders have been put up. They have nowhere to pull in any more," she went on.
She agreed that the dumping problems associated with illegal encampments along The Dodder, in Dublin and elsewhere this summer had been a public relations disaster for Travellers. However, she insisted that just a few families were at fault.
The Dodder encampment received publicity, while other long-term blackspots, such as Lynch's Lane in Clondalkin, had been ignored for years.
"There, Travellers have dumped but so, too, have settled people. The Dodder is beautiful. It is high profile. It is in a rich area. It gets all the attention," Ms O'Toole said.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fβil TD Mr Chris Flood accused Fine Gael TD Ms Olivia Mitchell of having "an anti-Traveller mindset", and had opposed some of D·n Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council's efforts to house Travellers. "She is hardly the person to be launching a Bill which aims to strike a balance on rights issues when she unashamedly sits on a record of having voted against the council's housing plan," he maintained.
Fine Gael was making "a mockery" of its own proposal because it acknowledged that local authorities were currently required to provide sites to cope with their local Travellers and with transient Travellers.
The issue has exercised Fianna Fβil TDs as well, however. Two weeks ago, many of them demanded that Minister of the Environment, Mr Dempsey, curb summer-time movement of Travellers.
