Indeed your bang on it could and indeed was a settled few who were as bad ,
Got thrown out,
One with issues- but dangerous,
One moved onto a bigger house,
One a prostitute/ dealer ( across the road)
Got fucked out
And another family left( the creep who knifed a guy to death here last year-Ricardo Hoey
( was living here with his grandad etc)
Cluid because of the housing crisis are obliged to take whomever is at the top of the co council list
( that’s from the new housing officers mouth to me last week)
They are a lovely organisation to deal with tbh but they’ve dropped the ball in this instance.
I know many lovely traveller families. One kid I know just got his Phd.
Unfortunately this kid you describe here is called a ‘‘fool’’ by his traveller peers. If you want to insult or undermine a traveller call them a fool.
It’s the whole toxic traveller culture that’s bloody wrong
Elephant in the room ref travellers woes etc etc
Is the drug culture and the bloody senseless ongoing feuding and domestic and sexual violence,
Nobody wants or has the appetite to sort it,
If any settled ppl behaved like the travellers do
They’d be building new jails annually,
They’re causing absolute mayhem up n down the country,
Between them and settled drug dealers the county’s banjaxed.
Education is the key for all
Especially those in low socioeconomic areas
Etc etc
I saw RCs in the 6 counties climb out of their working class areas and backgrounds to break the chain and finally because of education choose where and how to live .
My own youngest thankfully because of UCC will do likewise
Its the key mate. It doesnt necessarily have to be academic either. A good trade and young lads wouldnt have the time to be blackguarding. Good money too.
Everyone needs a reason to get up in the morning, purpose etc. Very important. For self esteem even.
I only know one traveller family, and id hate for them to think my tfk friends would exchange some of the views expressed in this thread. The family in question love their kids, invest in their furure, deal with prejudice, are as honest as the day is long and ask for absolutely nothing that they don’t pay for. I’m grateful for their business and i hope they think as well of me as i do of them.
The problems faced and presented by any community will largely depend on their place in society, their socioeconomic status, access to education and so on. Culture, role models etc will also play a part, and there’s no point in saying otherwise. Every one of us owes our fine upstanding, heart and soul and pillar of the community (real or imagined) status to a large stroke of good fortune. I’m not dismissing anyone’s experience or frustration, but I’m not remotely content with the idea that the travellers i know deserve any of the contempt shown here. A few of us might cop on a little.
Do you know many travellers?
From living in Derry they’re far and few between,
Don’t generally cause mayhem up there as they do here constantly,
In case you think I’m exaggerating im not.
Not a week goes by here without reports of feuding,fighting,
Regularly houses being targeted,
Petrol bombed,
Some instances on Cork lcannot be ignored
Even this week FFS in Midleton etc,
Actually poured petrol over one guy in Mayfield ( 2 yrs ago)and set him alight in another instance🙄
AGS shot at in Rochestown
List goessssss on n on n on,
Did a whole morning on the local radio station last week about their cruelty to animals and neighbours up around St Anthony’s park
You may know a normal traveller family as I do a few,
But they’re like hens teeth.
I know what you’re saying. What am i supposed to do with it…judge everyone according to your experience. Government policy should always start with education. Underachievement should be prioritised and addressed wherever it is most apparent; in the schools. If a school has a problem with attendance, underachievement or violence then invest and prioritise accordingly.
And there will be no solutions, just gradual improvements.
There is a couple of large extended families in Limerick who are the opposite of that, mate. They’ve done nothing but cause trouble for decades. Vile and very, very dangeous people.
Your point is well made and fair given your experience but some of the carry on locally here is totally different to that. Again of course they are a minority within their community but their carry on at times is outrageous.
Here’s my experience. The first travellers I ever met in Donegal tried to sell me cocaine in a pub. A few years later, I was helping my brother renovate his new house and they came onto the site ‘looking for scrap metal’. We told them there wasn’t any. Once we took the tea break in a local cafe, we returned to a fortune’s worth of tools robbed from the house. I don’t tar them all with the same brush. They’re not all involved in criminality. However, the culture of refusal to get normal jobs like other citizens, but desiring the trappings of wealth of the working classes, criminality becomes more attractive. Start locking the parents up and/or and putting the children into temporary care if they miss time from school or some sort of punishment that will get them take their duty of care to their offspring seriously.
Almost one quarter – 25% – of the women at the Dóchas Centre women’s prison were Traveller women, according to a report from the Office of the Inspector of Prisons in 2019, despite adult Travellers making up just 0.5% of the total population of the country.
I wouldn’t base anything on my experience, or anyone else’s. How is anyone going to guage a situation based on anecdotes…and if you do accept the validity of prison stats etc, well- what then? Start locking people up before they commit crimes? Fair enough- maybe its people from some inner city estate first, and travellers second? All you can do is approach a situation positively. Make improvements where you can, but not based on identity
Interesting timing as I just made a post in the limerick thread before seeing this new thread and it was about persistent dangerous driving by travellers. I’m reposting it below in italics as is relevant to this thread too:
emphasised text I’ve unfortunately seen this same thing happen with my own eyes three times now - cars undertaking at speed in the hard shoulder same as you’d pass someone out. In every one of those incidents it was travellers - UK reg cars around Christmas time. It is maddeningly dangerous.
They will kill an innocent person and simply flee across fields to be picked up afterwards by friends or relatives and two days later they are back in England. I’m not sure what can be done about it. Speaking to an off duty Garda he told me they have a convoluted insurance system in place where basically there could be 200 cars insured under the same man’s name, but then there are a myriad of ‘named drivers’ for each car and these policies are taken out with dodgy upstart European insurance companies. Most of the travellers then have the same name so it’s hard to trace the right Thomas whatever that was maybe driving/fled the car - when he’s resident in England 50 weeks of the year. A very difficult situation and it’s no wonder they keep doing it without fear. It is too difficult catch red handed the perpetrator and when you do it comes out he’s only on a holiday here.
Regardless of the piece above on their dangerous driving, I find opinions on them is generally based solely on personal experience. Tbh bar on a broad/general sense I have had no negative (or particularly positive) experience with travellers. I find they range from being very business types (they just want to make money under the radar) and not bother with non travelling people to aggressive types that are happy to steam roll anyone in their way. My understanding from people that know the community well (the business side of them) is that they are extremely ingenious in spotting new and previously unthought of ways to make money. They are constantly looking for opportunities and nothing is straight forward with them.
I actually know a man trying to sell a traveller a property at the moment - he owns a property in a town with travellers that he was renting out to non traveller people but he was coming under so much pressure to sell from travellers that he’s had to put it up. It is taking months and months of these games and a dance to try to finalise a deal. He said they always feel like they have to get one over on you or they won’t do it so that might be why it’s getting delayed, he thinks the traveller man feels it’s too straight forward and a fair deal for the seller so he could pull out yet.