Call for Tipperary council to work with Travelling community, not against them
The council needs to work with Travellers, and not against them, a meeting in Tipperary heard.
At the September meeting of the Nenagh Municipal District (MD), independent councillor Séamie Morris said that the local authority should aim to work with members of the Travelling community, and called for a multi-agency meeting to be set up.
Following a briefing from members of Tipperary County Council’s environment section, Cllr Morris raised the issue of members of the Travelling community grazing horses on council-owned land in the Nenagh area.
"I know a couple of young Travellers that have put horses out towards Stereame in the past, and they’re not doing anything wrong,” Cllr Morris said.
"I’ve always said that we need a multi-agency meeting with the Travelling community and organisations, to see how we can work with them, as opposed to always taking them on, head on,” he added.
“If young kids want to have horses, it’s not a bad thing, and maybe we can work with them to be able to put horses where we can accept that they can put horses, rather than taking them on all the time”.
An open line of communication is needed, Cllr Morris added.
"It’s not just all the time giving out about them, I’ve always been calling for that multi-agency meeting so we can work with them, and maybe stop them coming in and putting caravans in Stereame, but it works both ways, I think we need to open a line of communication on that,” Cllr Morris said.
In response, a representative from the council’s environment section said that they will take a look at the issues of horses in the Stereame area.
The environment section’s report said that 10 horses had been seized in the Nenagh MD area, with all 10 of them being rehomed as no one reclaimed them.
The council noted that this figure was in line with previous years.
Earlier this year, several caravans parked up in the Stereame Business Park in Nenagh, which was branded at the time as “unacceptable” by local councillor John Carroll.