€150 million plus spent on housing travellers over 5 years

MOST of them come with just a bathroom, toilet, kitchen, living area and no bedrooms -- but some councils have spent as much as €500,000 on halting bays for individual Traveller families.

Typically, a bay consists of a parking space for caravans or vans as well as a separate building, described by some housing officers as a "tigin" like structure which doesn't have any bedrooms.

Huge variations have been discovered in spending by local authorities, figures obtained by the Irish Independent reveal.

But while some have achieved value for money, others are guilty of excessive spending.

The new figures reveal that 25 of the county and city councils spent €121m accommodating Travellers in halting sites and in houses over the past five years.

Details were not available for the remaining nine primary local authorities, meaning that the total spend is likely to top €150m.

Town councils such as Tullamore, Mullingar and Letterkenny, manage their own budgets, which means that the total is likely to be higher again. Galway City Council emerged as one of the most generous of all local authorities, spending €10m over the past five years.

The council also spent over €1.56m on five bays in a halting site in Doughiska, working out at around €300,000 each.

In South Dublin, the council went even further -- shelling out over €500,000 per bay in a 10-bay site in Rathfarnham. At current market prices, €500,000 would buy a comfortable four bed semi-detached house in the Rathfarnam area.

The total cost of building the homes at Stocking Hill was €5,075,879.

The site in Rathfarnam was already council-owned, which means that South Dublin County Council did not have to pay for the land which it built the bays on. The site at Doughiska in Galway was also council owned.

Occupiers

In total, South Dublin was by far the highest spending council, forking out €40.3m on Traveller accommodation since 2005. Occupiers of halting sites pay rent to the local council, but the amount is understood to vary according to circumstances.

Elsewhere, Cavan County Council spent a total of €886,965 over five years. Cavan's thrifty total worked out at an average of €80,663 per permanent house and €105,362 per halting bay.

Differing costs from council to council can be put down to the level of work that needs to be carried out.

The level of needs of those who have to be housed also has to be taken into consideration.

A spokesman for Traveller group Pavee Point was not contactable last night.

Labour's housing spokesman Ciaran Lynch said that the emphasis of local authority spending needed to be on permanent social housing rather than transient halting sites.

"In view of the fact that there are now 100,000 people on social housing lists across the country, the priority needs to be on longer term housing needs," Mr Lynch said.

- Fiach Kelly