Grim battle gearing up as Travellers colonise town estates - Ireland

From Independent.ie

It is high summer, or what passes for it in Ireland, and we are passing through the picture postcard delights of the Limerick village of Adare.

As salmon loll near the surface of the river, for even fish like a bit of the sun occasionally, it is easy to see why the self-styled 'prettiest village in Ireland' is the playground du jour of our new aristocrats.

We continue, for our destination is not Adare but the even better known town of Rathkeale -- which has come to international attention courtesy most recently of the Channel 4 My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding series.

Ireland is, of course, famous for being a land of contrasts, and sadly the once prosperous Rathkeale is becoming famous for far darker activities than diamante mile-long gypsy wedding dresses or its status as the unofficial Traveller capital of Ireland.

Nothing prepares you for the starkness of the spectacle that unfolds from the outskirts of what should be a tidy prosperous community. Instead you enter a town in crisis.

"All the conditions for a social time-bomb'' are developing in the mixed Traveller/settled community of Rathkeale, said Fianna Fail justice spokesman Niall Collins, who wants the State authorities, Customs, Social Protection Officers, the Revenue and the CAB to combine to deal with escalating levels of crime and lawlessness in the area.

Despite its location in lush rolling countryside just 7km from the plush Adare village, a combination of lax council supervision, political indifference and increasing lawlessness has sparked growing fears that Rathkeale is on the edge of becoming the rural equivalent of the devastated Moyross estate in Limerick.

As the town struggles to deal with Traveller criminality in areas as varied as the smuggling of rhino horn -- a commodity more valuable than cocaine and blood diamonds -- there are also major concerns about money laundering and fencing.

Ironically, Rathkeale for most of the year is a peaceful community that experiences low levels of criminality. However, the situation is transformed during certain times of the year, particularly the summer and Christmas, when the town's population is, according to Collins, "trebled and occasionally quadrupled by hordes of non-indigenous Travellers'.'

Rathkeale now needs a "major regeneration project on the scale of Moyross to deal with unprecedented levels of dereliction," said Collins, who said a "property audit" is required to deal with the mass purchase of property by people who then shutter it up and leave it in an abandoned state for 11 months of the year.

While Rathkeale has always had a high proportion of Travellers, community, political and policing sources all claim that the source of the village's escalating woes is the major influx of non-native Travellers who have chosen Rathkeale as an unofficial capital of the Traveller community.

Their arrival from areas as diverse as eastern Europe, the infamous Dale Farm in England, Paris, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Italy at Christmas requires a dedicated policing plan, including armed police, to maintain order in this sleepy town of little more than 1,000 souls, said the local TD.

Though the media focuses attention on these festivals, the main cause of the escalating tensions within this unique community is the alleged mass purchasing of property at the expense of locals by these Travellers who then leave the properties in a derelict and boarded up state.

Its most astonishing phenomenon is what locals call the "Traveller ghost estates'', where entire housing developments with mansion-like five- bedroom detached houses are largely derelict, occupied for at most one month of the year.

In these estates, which are believed to be predominantly owned by the non-indigenous Traveller community, nothing grows except for weeds, and every house, though apparently empty, is protected by the iconic high steel gates, security grilles, and ubiquitous CCTV cameras and 'keep out' notices.

A drive through the town also reveals that the phenomenon of these 'ghost' houses has spread to "respectable middle-class estates and older council-owned housing'' where an unspoken but grim battle is occurring between the settled community and non-indigenous Travellers who are seeking to "colonise'' the older estates.

The unease of the local residents is understandable for those Traveller houses which are owned in settled estates, with their steel grilles and iron barricaded doors, resemble something one would see near a Belfast peace line.

Collins said: "The settled community live in harmony with the native Travellers; it is the people who leave the town for 11 months and then swamp the community that are the problem."

Ultimately the most shocking feature of what is a pretty unique town is its main thoroughfare, for this is a street which is locked up.

The collapse of Ireland's retail economy means there is no shortage of deserted village-type scenes on Ireland's main streets, but few can match the desolation of a main street where over 50 per cent of its buildings appear to be in lockdown.

One of the rougher measures of a town's prosperity in rural Ireland, with apologies to Roisin Shortall, is the number of functioning pubs.

We are told that "once in Rathkeale, a man could drink in a different pub each week of the year and still have a couple left over for Christmas week''. Today the town has just five pubs.

The anger and concern within the community is captured by the views of Seamus Hogan, the chairman of Rathkeale Action Group.

"We have a main street of derelict buildings locked up forever,'' he said.

Hogan outlined an incredible situation where, in Rathkeale, "properties that are purchased for phenomenal cash sums simply cease trading, and are boarded and hoarded up".

The community activist noted, "Rathkeale's greatest asset is its community -- we're proud to be from Rathkeale, but there's no support from a higher level. We're the ones left here to clean it up. People still want to live in the town but commercial life will cease to exist here within five years. It is as if the oxygen is being shut off slowly.''

Referring to the high-profile influxes in summer and at Christmas, Hogan noted of the town that "at the moment it's like Disneyland but come back at Christmas and it's more like Afghanistan''.

In spite of all these grim concerns, life can, for the moment, still continue as normal in Rathkeale.

Damien O'Grady, the leaseholder of the pleasantly apportioned Rathkeale Hotel, told the Sunday Independent that "the place gets a bad reputation" but he notes that a high-profile row in the hotel's car park that received publicity because a Traveller function was taking place didn't involve Travellers at all.

"We do get an influx at Christmas -- I call them tourists, it's like me going to France for six weeks -- but in spite of our reputation, this town has all the elements of a community: the golf, the GAA, soccer, one of the best boxing clubs in Ireland, Mr O'Grady said.

"It is important that myself, politicians and business people keep a positive side out," he added.