Report hightlights 'uninhabitable, unsafe, and unhealthy' Traveller accommodation in Galway

Thu, Dec 05, 2019

Almost none of the safety and health concerns raised by the Traveller community have been addressed across 18 sites and group housing schemes in Galway city and county since a monitoring project focusing on Traveller accommodation began in 2017, according to a report published this week.

According to Traveller Homes Now, the third monitoring report in two years on the state of Traveller accommodation in Galway, no meaningful progress has been made by Galway's two local authorities to respond to the “uninhabitable, unsafe, and unhealthy” accommodation in which many Traveller families are being forced to live.

Galway Travellers presented the report to Galway city and county councils this week, on the day that Ireland reported to CERD, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The Galway Travelling Community described the now decades-long failure to provide culturally appropriate accommodation as “cultural genocide, designed to wear people down and to force them to assimilate by accepting houses out of desperation".