Travellers still being demonised, says expert

by Gordon Deegan

SOME sections of society still believe it is okay to demonise Travellers, a leading academic has warned.

Dr Bryan Fanning, of UCD's school of applied science, said it was one of the great ironies of 21st century Ireland that thousands of immigrants are living here with little controversy. But a group of Irish people, he said, who have been part of society going back centuries are still being pilloried by their own.

Dr Fanning was speaking yesterday on the experience of Travellers in Ireland, and specifically in Co Clare.

He said, as a society, we despise racism and the norms about discrimination against people are being increasingly enforced. But "the hostility towards Travellers has deepened in some ways, but not universally".

The academic said in modern Ireland "it's still okay to pillory Travellers, to demonise them, to think about them in a certain type of way. It is a way of talking that should never ever be allowed to apply to any people."

In a paper Go, move, shift: Travellers in 20th century Clare, which forms part of a new book, Clare — History and Society, Dr Fanning accuses councillors in the county of playing a central role in articulating anti-Traveller feeling and in opposing efforts to provide accommodation for Travellers even though they were members of local authorities with responsibility for providing such accommodation.

He writes that councillors' response to the seemingly insoluble problem of Traveller accommodation "was to press for the exclusion of Travellers, to denigrate them as a deviant group in making arguments for discriminating against them".

"The story of Clare is a microcosm of what happened in the country as a whole. Travellers weren't well treated in Clare."

The author of Racism and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland, said when the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, "tried to support the Travellers during the 1990s and lead by example, he got criticised by Ennis councillors for allowing Travellers camp on church land, so he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't".

Dr Fanning said that up until the 19505, Travellers "had a place in the rural economy and then they gradually got displaced because farm modernisation, plastics came in — the whole landscape changed and they became a suburban poor".

But Ennis-based councillor for the past 29 years, Tommy Brennan (Ind), said Dr Fanning was ill-informed, as local authorities in Clare provided 70 houses to Travellers.

He said: "We have done more than our fair share."