Galway City Council has been presented with the report of the draft Traveller Accommodation Programme which showed there are over 100 homeless Traveller children in Galway.
The report revealed that Emergency homeless services are allocated to Traveller men, women and families on an ‘ongoing basis’.
The information contained figures from May 2019 which showed there are 68 Traveller adults and 104 traveller children availing of homeless services in Galway.
All in all, there are 34 Traveller family units who are categorized as homeless.
The report made for tough reading as it declared that there has been a ‘notable increase’ in Traveller homelessness and blamed the rising numbers of Traveller homelessness on the ‘lack of properties within the rental market’.
The purposes of the Traveller Accommodation Programme for Galway City is to construct a plan to to meet the existing and projected needs of Travellers in the area.
The plan encompasses the provision of permanent, emergency, temporary or transient accommodation for members of the Traveller community along with support for those waiting for accommodation.
Through consultation with Travellers in need of accommodation, the report revealed that 38% of respondents favored Local Authority housing as their first preference while 21% opted for culturally appropriate Traveller accommodation.
The programme aims to provide 25 units of Culturally Appropriate Traveller Accommodation over the next five years along with the provision of seven vacancies within permanent residential halting sites.
To add to this, the programme targets the addition of 15 group housing schemes over the next five years along with targeting the provision of 50 standard Local Authority houses and 30 units of accommodation under Approved Housing Bodies.
Last year, a report from the ESRI and IHREC revealed that Travellers are the most at risk of being homeless.
Although Travellers make up a mere 1% of the overall population they make up 9% of the homeless population.
