Mags GarganClerics ministering to the Travelling community have said that Irish society’s treatment of Travellers is an example of our attitudes towards the vulnerable.
The Bishop of Wateford & Lismore told The Irish Catholic the controversy over the temporary placement of Travellers in Carrickmines in Dublin, “after the tragic fire which claimed 10 lives”, has brought the “divisions in our society” to come “into clear focus again”.
Bishop Phonsie Cullinan, who ministered to the Travelling community as a parish priest in Limerick, said “the great difficulty in this stand-off between settled and Traveller lies in putting people into two distinct and uniform categories. I am sure that there are differing shades of opinion in both communities on what should be done.”
He called for dialogue to end the standoff, asking “Have the two groups sat down together? Have they been in each other’s company and looked at each other face to face?”
“Treating one group in society as a homogenous collection of persons is to depersonalise them. When one sits down with them one sees that they are just the same as ourselves with their own desires and hopes in life, their own fears and disappointments.”
Fr Micheál MacGréil SJ, who has carried out three surveys since the 1970s documenting the “growing polarisation” in Irish altitudes towards Travellers, said the Travelling community is a “microcosm of our attitude to the deprived”.
Investment
Fr MacGréil, who has camped with Travellers, said the lack of investment for the Traveller community in the last five years is a “terrible scandal”. “During the period of the Celtic Tiger the Government was most generous but when the cut backs came, it was people like the Travellers who were cut back,” he said.
“We have to recognise Travellers as an Irish ethic minority and recognise when you have an ethic minority special provisions should be made for their culture as well as the culture of the main population. This is an opportune time to look at that, with smaller ethnic groups coming from abroad, if we want to be a pluralist society.”
Fr Pat Hogan, PP in Southill in Limerick, criticised the conditions that Travellers are expected to live in at halting sites. “During some very bad winters a couple of Traveller sites here had no water or gas. Everything was frozen for six weeks and it was impossible for kids to go to school,” he said. “How do you expect people to live in a mobile home that people go on holidays in? Black fungus grows in them and you can’t heat them throughout the winter. How can any authority say this is good enough accommodation for children to grow up in?”
Fr Hogan said there is a “great distrust and even hatred” of Travellers in the wider community, and “if we don’t find a solution, general society will pay the price because isolation and hated leads to more anti-social behaviour and violence”.
Support
Speaking at the funeral of the Gilbert and Lynch family, Fr Derek Farrell of the Parish of the Travelling People said that the “widespread instinctive outpouring of support for the families” has been important for building up positive relationships.
“There has been so much good done, and goodwill shown. The flowers, messages, books of condolences, prayer vigils, Masses, the wonderful Fassaroe neighbourhood street candles and altar, the shrines, the prayers, the songs,” he said. “And all of this has been in a context of often new close relationship and interactions between settled and Traveller, united in various forms of solidarity and prayer over the past week.”
Pope Francis, having learned of the horrific fire in Carrickmines, sent a message to be read out at funeral Masses for the Gilbert, Lynch and Connors families, which expressed his “deep sadness over this terrible tragedy”. The Pope said he is praying for those who have died, and wished “to assure all their family members, their friends, and the whole Traveller community” of his “spiritual closeness and sympathy at this very difficult time”.
