‘Nomadic life has all but disappeared from Traveller culture in the north’

"It's like taking a fish out of water… that’s what it is for us to go into a house.” In the last in a series of articles on issues affecting the Irish Traveller community in Northern Ireland, Luke Butterly looks at Travellers and housing.

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IRISH Travellers are losing their traditional way of life due to a lack of safe and legal halting sites in Northern Ireland, a charity has warned.

Twenty years ago, a quarter of all Travellers in the north lived in caravans.

But by 2021 that number had dropped to 10%, according to Census figures.

Travellers Paul and Sarah* have lived in a caravan on a site in Legahory, Craigavon, Co Armagh, since 2019.

They said they cannot imagine living in a house.

“It’s like taking a fish out of water. It’s not going to work,” Sarah said.

“That’s what it is for us to go into a house, when you’re not used to it, and you are used to living in a caravan.

“It’s like telling you to change religion.

“We don’t want our culture forced from us.”

Paul previously lived in a house but felt it was “like prison”.

“I’m not built for that,” he said.

Legahory is one of only four public sites for Travellers in Northern Ireland: two in Craigavon; one in Derry city, and one in Coalisland, Co Tyrone.

All four sites are run by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE).

However, conditions on sites are poor. The most recent 2018/2019 Traveller accommodation survey, which surveyed 50 Traveller households living on the four sites, found 19 (38%) households had no hot water; 16 (32%) had no indoor toilets, and 10 (20%) had no electricity.

Legahory, where Paul and Sarah live, has been operating for more than 15 years.

It is officially designated for stays of up to 28 days, although most families have lived there for years.

A maximum of eight caravans are officially allowed on site but around 17 are pitched there.

Sarah said conditions on the site are “not fit for dogs”.

External lighting – powered by solar panels - is poor, and there is no children’s play area.

Families cook and wash in small prefabricated units which include a kitchen, washing machine, shower and toilet.

Paul and Sarah said the unheated units have no hot water in the kitchens, black mould, broken doors and frequently attract mice.

“What we're living in at this moment, is a steel square box unit,” Paul said.

“(It) has no insulation, has no inside heating, has no hot water. Water freezes in the winter.”

He added: “You want to be there in the winter, when it’s minus three degrees.”

Paul said their unit is used by nine people.

“When you have big families, it's not easy,” he said.

“There's mice droppings over the floor every morning where we are living.”

An NIHE spokesman said the site is inspected every week.

“All repairs reported are passed to the maintenance department and appropriate works completed as necessary,” he said.

However, Lisa Hogg, from Craigavon Traveller Support Committee (CTSC) charity, described the site as a “glorified car park”.

She said conditions have deteriorated in recent years.

“The bottom line is that Legahory Close is in a worse state of repairs now than it was in 2018… plans for the development of the site are still in the pre planning stages and families are being condemned to continue living in third world conditions because there are no other sites in the north where they can move to,” she said.

Permanent Legahory site

Families want Legahory to be officially designated as a permanent site, meaning that the NIHE would have to apply for planning permission and provide permanent cooking and washing facilities.

Paul, who has lived in the Craigavon area for decades, said families have been shown plans for a permanent site but are sceptical it will be built.

“They are promising us roses, and giving us pebbles,” he said.

“My father was 30 years in this town, waiting for a site to be built.”

When The Detail asked the NIHE when the site would be made permanent, a spokesman said: “Improvement works for the upgrade of the site at Legahory Close are due on site June 2025.”

The proposed permanent site will only have space for five caravans, even though 17 are currently pitched there.

An NIHE spokesman said it identified a need for a “five pitch, serviced site” at Legahory following a review of the site in 2021/22.

He said the review included asking Travellers living locally for their input.

“Therefore, work began to design a scheme based on this assessment,” he said.

However, Ms Hogg said the plans do not take into account that Travellers traditionally live together in extended family groups and will soon need even more space.

“There is no recognition that this family is growing,” she said.

“And that the 18 and 19-year-olds in the next five/ten years are going to be starting their own families.”

Struggle for accommodation

The number of Travellers who live in the north has doubled in the last decade - from 1,301 in 2011 to 2,610 in 2021, according to Census figures.

But over the last decade, the number of public halting sites has reduced from seven to four.

A NIHE spokesman said the three sites had closed for safety reasons. Part of one of the remaining four sites was sold to a Traveller family who were living there.

The NIHE’s own research found Travellers may be moving away from caravan living “simply (as) a result of there being no other housing option” and “may be in part due to the perceived level of disrepair on some sites and an overall lack of sites”.

Travellers and support groups told The Detail that many families would prefer to live in a caravan.

Paul and Sarah said they want to be able to travel and come back to Legahory “to show the kids the life we have lived, our culture”.

But because the site is temporary, if they leave they will lose their pitch.

“We want to feel safe,” Paul said.

“We lived on the roadside, where people pull up and throw stones through your window. But in this situation where we live (now), that doesn’t happen.”

Deirdre McAliskey of the South Tyrone Empower Programme (STEP), a community organisation in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, which works with Travellers and other communities, said that the decline in caravan living “has been a matter of concern for over twenty years”.

“Nomadic life has all but disappeared from Traveller culture in the north, as it has become almost impossible to safely and legally claim stopping rights in council areas,” she said.

Under the Unauthorised Encampments (NI) Order 2005, Travellers are banned from setting up caravans on unapproved sites. Those who do can be evicted by police. Their caravans can also be seized if they do not leave quickly enough.

No new sites

Around 69% of Travellers live in social housing; 10% rent private homes; 3% own their own homes; 10% live in caravans, and 1% live in other accommodation.

The remaining 7% live in grouped housing - specific accommodation for Travellers which includes homes with space for caravans, work vans, and stables for horses.

Northern Ireland has a total of 62 grouped houses across seven developments, including in Belfast, Derry, Fermanagh, Newry, and Mid Ulster.

For Traveller Michael Mongan, grouped housing changed his life.

He used to live in a caravan at the side of a busy bypass in west Belfast, which he described as “hell”.

“(It was) living in squalor, muck up to their knees, rats as big as dogs,” he said.

He began campaigning in earnest after his five-year-old son was killed by a speeding car in a hit-and-run.

He said joyriders speeding down the bypass frequently crashed into the site “sometimes straight into a caravan”.

“There was a load of crashes,” he said. “We saved a fella who came out of his car, his car was up on its roof. We invited him in, but (instead) he tore off like a rabbit.”

He now lives in a 25-home development in Mill Race in west Belfast.

“The streets are their (children’s) playground, there are no cars flying up and down,” he said.

The development includes space for businesses and a paddock and stable block for horses.

“My father never drove a car in his life,” he said.

“We were with horses seven days a week. That was our main transport.

“I have horses and I have dogs, and I’m not getting rid of them for the sake of a house, I’d rather live in a caravan.”

He said the Mill Race site, which was built following extensive consultation with Travellers, is an example for others.

“A lot of Travellers come from all over the country (to see it, saying) ‘how did you get this done?’,” he said.

However, the success of the development means space is at a premium.

Mr Mongan’s grandson Gary Mongan, his wife Kathleen, and their young family, are living in a caravan on land which is part of the family home.

The couple, who are in their early twenties, have been waiting for social housing for two years.

Gary Mongan said they want to stay to be close to family.

“My brother and sister live over here, and they have special needs,” he said.

“I need to look after them as well, my mother needs help with them”.

The couple said they are happy to pay rent and cover any additional costs.

But they said that Apex Housing Association, which is responsible for the development, want the caravan to be removed.

Kathleen Mongan said: “We thought this would be easier for everybody, them not having to house us and us still paying rent”.

“We thought this would be win-win for everybody. (But) They just weren't happy about it.”

A spokeswoman for Apex said that “a number of meetings have taken place with the family and support organisations to advise the family on their rehousing options”.

“The family have been informed that re-housing advice should be sought through NIHE,” she said.

Lack of homes

Ms Hogg said housing provision for Travellers across the north is poor.

“There remains a massive shortage of adequate Traveller accommodation in Northern Ireland and no actual progress has been made to address this,” she said.

“The priority objective must remain the provision of sufficient sites and grouped housing to meet Traveller needs and a pro-active and participative approach to making it happen.”

The Detail asked NIHE whether it had identified a need for any new Traveller-specific accommodation, including halting sites and grouped housing projects.

An NIHE spokesman said assessments were carried out in several areas between 2021 and 2023. But they found no new projects were needed.

“Latent Demand Tests have been carried out in Belfast, Craigavon, Derry/Londonderry and Strabane to assess need in those areas and we were able to conclude that there was no additional need,” he said.

*Paul and Sarah are pseudonyms

This investigation was supported by a grant from the St Stephen’s Green Trust.