Council fails to meet targets for traveller accommodation

Home

News

Local News

Written by Marie Madden

Wednesday, 29 August 2007

Local authorities in Galway have failed to meet targets for housing of the travelling community laid out in the Traveller Accommodation Plan, according to new figures for 2006.

According to the report published on Monday, Galway County Council housed double their target amount of members of the travelling community in 2005, but this was reduced to 59 per cent in 2006.

The situation was similar in the city with the council reaching 110 per cent of their target in 2005 but only 73 per cent in 2006 – below the national average of 91 per cent.

Galway West TD Frank Fahey has said he can see no reason for the drop in progress as the council have received “substantial” amounts of money from the government for this purpose.

“I can’t see any reason why this is the case. I would have thought that they would be progressing well with this as there isn’t any issue with funding, something which is often a problem. The council have received substantial amounts of funding from the government for this purpose.”

However, a spokesperson for the City Council defended the figures, saying that it does not take into account other accommodation progress.

“The reason for this was that the target set for 2006 was higher than that for 2005. However, the same number of families were accommodated both years in standard accommodation with a further five traveller families accommodated also in traveller specific units in 2005. Also, it should be noted that this does not take account of offers of accommodation made to traveller families and refused for whatever reasons, including compatibility, and traveller families transferred to different units of accommodation,” they said.

“These performance indicators also do not take account of other traveller accommodation progress including the complete refurbishment of both the Tuam Road and Doughiska halting sites, which began in 2006 and completed in 2007,” they added.

Comments (0) »