Council needs 135 homes for Travellers in next five years

Westmeath County Council needs 135 more homes to house Travellers over the next five years.

The council has opened consultation on a draft of its Traveller Accommodation Programme, which will guide how the ethnic group is housed across Westmeath from 2025 to 2029.

The programme, published on June 30, is an obligation for the council under the terms of the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act 1998, and it has to be adopted by councillors by the year’s end.

It outlines the current housing needs of the 474 Traveller families living in Westmeath and estimates the future needs of the 67 Travellers who will turn 18 over the course of the programme.

Currently, there are 22 families living in halting site bays in the county, with six bays free, a further nine families living in caravans at the rear of gardens, and 16 families living in ‘transient’ accommodation.

There are an additional 218 families living in standard local authority housing, 110 families whose accommodation has been acquired through assistance from the council, 22 families being supported by HAP, and 72 families in private rented accommodation.

Through an assessment of need carried out with the help of the Westmeath Traveller Project, it was found that 135 more accommodation units are needed in the county over the next five years.

The council has outlined a plan to achieve the housing target, which includes securing 26 units for Travellers in 2025 and 2026, 26 units in 2027, and 28 units in each of 2028 and 2029.

The plan is that 61 of these units will be standard local authority homes, five will be halting site bays, and 55 homes will be leased through HAP and RAS schemes.

Travellers were first recognised as an ethnic group in Ireland in 2017 by Enda Kenny in Dáil Éireann.

Details on how to make a submission to the draft Traveller Accommodation Programme can be found on the council website.