In the Shadow of Carrickmines: Irish Government violates Traveller Housing and Accommodation Rights
23 May 2016
“I want to say here, as unambiguously and as clearly as I can, that discrimination and prejudice against Travellers and Roma is racism and it must be named as racism and tackled as racism.”
Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland
Seven months after the Carrickmines tragedy which claimed 10 young lives on a poorly maintained temporary halting site, the Irish Government stands accused in Europe of continued neglect and failure when it comes to accommodation for Travellers.
The publication of the ruling by European Committee of Social Rights last Monday swiftly prompted a clash between the Department of Justice and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) over whether the ruling on Travellers’ rights being violated is legally binding.
Photo credit: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times
In response to the collective complaint taken against the Irish Government on behalf of the Irish Traveller Movement (ITM) by the ERRC, the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) concluded unanimously that the government has violated Article 16 of the European Social Charter on four grounds: (1) that provision of accommodation for Travellers remains insufficient; (2) that many Traveller sites are in an inadequate condition; (3) that Irish law provides inadequate safeguards for Travellers threatened with eviction, (4) and that evictions are carried out without necessary safeguards.
On these four key points, the ECSR’s unanimous conclusions stand as a damning indictment of the state’s policy and legislative failures to uphold the right to protection against poverty and social exclusion. In response to the findings, the ERRC President Đorđe Jovanović expressed his concern about the lack of safeguards for those facing evictions:
“Right across Europe, we have legally contested forced evictions of Roma and Travellers, and twice in the last month succeeded in getting the European Court of Human Rights to invoke emergency measures to halt evictions in Romania and Italy … In the case of Ireland, the ECSR noted there is a failure to provide for prior consultation, or prior notice; there is no winter moratorium, and no requirement to provide adequate alternative accommodation. I am especially concerned that there is no legal aid for those facing eviction. The remedy of judicial review in the absence of legal aid is no remedy at all. I would call on the Irish state to ensure that all those facing eviction have full access to free legal aid.”
… but no violation of Articles 30 and E?
However the committee’s finding that the State was not in breach of Article 30 in conjunction with Article E (the right to non-discrimination) is, in the words of Committee Vice-President Petros Stangos, “at odds with common sense”.
In his dissenting opinion he stated that the Committee, on the one hand, found that the concrete practices and measures pursued or adopted by the Irish Government which resulted in poor upkeep of halting sites; insufficient provision of accommodation for Travellers; and the failure of the applicable law to provide for basic safeguards around evictions, all amounted to violations of Article 16.
On the other hand, and despite this, the majority of the members of the Committee elected not to consider the same national practices or measures under Article 30 (paragraph 193). Stangos observed that this effectively amounts to condoning aspects of Irish Government policy that were roundly criticised in numerous other paragraphs of the decision, and concluded: “I consider this approach to be a backward step in the attempt to secure the consistency of the various provisions of the Charter and the legal instrument’s normative integrity.”
Racism, discrimination and prejudice
The notion that discrimination and prejudice play no part in the failures to protect Irish Travellers from poverty and social exclusion is similarly “at odds with common sense.” Let no one forget the Carrickmines catastrophe and its aftermath, where protests by settled residents resulted in the survivors of the fire being moved to a site, described in the New York Times as “an isolated parking lot adjacent to a decommissioned dump - a site whose single apparent advantage was having nobody living close enough to object.” This served as a particularly tragic reminder of the human cost of institutional neglect and popular prejudice. And as the President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins put it as unambiguously and as clearly as he could, “discrimination and prejudice against Travellers and Roma is racism and it must be named as racism and tackled as racism.”
“Living conditions at Carrickmines are replicated all around the country. In order to avoid homelessness Travellers are forced to double or triple up on halting sites. This has an impact on health including mental health,” said Ronnie Fay, Co-Director of Pavee Point. Fay was attending the UN Universal Periodic Review, held just days before the publication of the ECSR findings. During the review, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty observed that, because of the structural discrimination they experienced, Travellers were particularly vulnerable to poverty, suffering from lower life expectancy and education outcomes.
The European Commission was similarly critical of the lack of progress in its most recent review of Ireland’s National Traveller/Roma Integration Strategy. The Commission stressed the need for better coordination across the policy areas of health, education, employment and housing; called for improved monitoring and reinforced mechanisms for better communication and dialogue; and emphasised the need for adequate funding to combat the higher risk of homelessness among Travellers. The Commission made specific mention of the need for the state to develop a systematic approach to tackle prejudices against the Traveller and Roma communities, including working with the media.
Binding or not?
In response to the Committee’s rulings that Ireland was in violation of Travellers’ rights, IHREC chief commissioner Emily Logan said the ruling was legally binding and required an urgent response from Government. Commissioner Logan told the Irish Times that
“It will be important that the recommendations reflect the rights of Travellers not only to accommodation that is adequate, safe and contributes to social inclusion, but also to accommodation that respects Travellers’ cultural identity and their nomadic way of life.”
The verdict from IHREC was that this case was taken under the European Social Charter, which Ireland has ratified, making it legally binding on the State. The view from the Department of Justice was that this ruling comes from a committee not a court and therefore is not legally binding.
A spokeswoman for the ITM acknowledged that while strictly speaking the ruling is not legally binding, once the ruling is tested in an Irish court and the rights it upholds asserted, it will then be legally binding, “As such the ruling was ‘justiciable’.”
So what next?
The spokesman from the Department of Justice stated that the State “takes the ruling, and our commitments under the revised European Social Charter very seriously.”
But just how seriously does the State take its commitments? Even as the UN deliberations were in progress, forced evictions of Travellers were being carried out. The day after the ECSR findings were published, two caravans were seized and two men detained by police in a breakfast-time eviction from a temporary halting site in County Louth. One Traveller from the site told the press “The council have still not offered any other alternative solution and now the Guards are after coming and seizing these people's homes. People are now once again homeless and on the street.” Fay called for an immediate moratorium on all Traveller evictions given the lack of provision of Traveller specific accommodation: “Where are Travellers supposed to go?”
If the state intends to take its obligations seriously, then there needs to be immediate remedy of the violations of the European Social Charter, and a thorough review of current inclusion policies. This Committee’s conclusions send a clear signal of the need for a profound rethink by the Irish state of what is to be done to ensure that for Irish Travellers “the enjoyments of the rights set forth in the Charter shall be secured without discrimination on any ground.” And for starters, the new government needs to pay heed to what Bernard Joyce, Director of the Irish Traveller Movement recently stated:
“Given the violations found under the Charter, we call for the Government and newly appointed Minister for the Environment to amend the current legislation related to evictions of Travellers, evidenced recently in families affected in Dundalk and Galway. We also call for the mode of delivery of Traveller accommodation to be reviewed and provide powers to the NTACC to give direction to any local authority which does not achieve its targets. Seventeen years and four National Traveller Accommodation Programmes later an independent National Traveller Accommodation Agency is vital to provide real results to deliver Traveller accommodation, in light of these findings the time to put that right is now.”
