This article is from page 41 of the 2007-09-25 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 41 JPG
TRAVELLERS living in Shannon are poised to be allocated space to keep their horses, following an agreement by councillors last week.
Shannon area members of Clare County Council agreed in princi- pal with a proposal that the issue be progressed, in that land should be made available to Travellers for the ZNODUOOTAN ESE
The initiative is part of a plan to improve the quality of life for travel- lers, under the programme ‘Strategy for the co-ordination of public serv- ices to the Traveller community in OE TroA0 Oe 0 OTe
Director of Services at Clare Coun- ty Council (Community and Enter- prise) Tom Coughlan explained the background to the idea.
‘Traditionally, Travellers have kept horses, but traditionally they would have had nowhere to keep them. That has been a point of conflict. We are looking at the possibility of leasing land to Travellers so they can keep their horses on the land,’ said Mr Sree
“We have to identify land owned by the council, which we can lease to Travellers. It has been raised as an issue by the Travellers themselves,” he added.
A number of Travellers live in Bal-
lymurtagh, Shannon, and the council is hopeful that suitable land will be found for the horses, as near to the houses as possible.
“We will try and come up with the most suitable land. We will progress it and see 1f the land is suitable,” said Mr Coughlan.
The decision taken by the council- lors last week gives the council the go-ahead to make efforts to secure the land. The size of the land will depend on the number of horses the travellers hope to keep there and the land will be leased to them.
This proposal regarding land for the horses arose as a consequence of the strategy, which stated that it would
“establish mechanisms to identify rentable land adjacent to Traveller accommodation’. In that, Travellers identified a need to rent land to allow for grazing of horses and for the care of valuable sulkie ponies.
It was suggested that as the request coming from the group was broad- based and could be difficult or take time to effect, the feasibility of run- ning a pilot project in Shannon would be investigated.
In June, a subgroup of the Accom- modation Actions group met with representatives of the Tralee Com- munity Horse Project, to gain an in- sight into how this particular project is organised and managed.