asked the Minister for Justice what powers the Gardaí have with regard to the removal of itinerants from roadside camping.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Itinerant Camping.
26.
The Garda Síochána are not empowered to compel itinerants to move or vacate their roadside camps.
In the interest of public safety, and in order to avoid the straying of horses and dogs on the road, would the Minister not consider it advisable to give power to the Garda to move itinerants from main roads to special camping sites provided by local authorities or, at least, to move them off the main roads?
Itinerants have the same rights as any other citizens of this country.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
If their activities cause offences to be committed against the law, the Garda enforce the law fully in that respect. As the Deputy probably is aware, a considerable number of prosecutions have been brought against itinerants and other people for allowing horses to wander or for obstructing traffic, but the fact that somebody is camped beside a road is not of itself an offence. However, some activities associated with such camping may give rise to an offence in which case the Garda would take the appropriate prosecution.
Can we take it——
Question No. 27.
——that somebody must be killed before these people are moved? I am not against the tinkers, as we call them, in any way—there are several of them near my own place— but two people were killed and five injured in the Coolock and Cloghran areas before these people were moved to another site. Are we to take it then, that we are to have a constant repetition of the pattern, people are killed, tinkers are moved?
Primarily, this is a matter for the local authorities. If local authorities are prepared to provide suitable camping sites, the problems envisaged by the Deputy would arise to a lesser extent.
(Cavan): Further arising——
I have called Question No. 27.
(Cavan): ——is it not a fact that, pending the provision of the camping sites mentioned by the Minister, the Minister for Local Government and the Minister for Justice have intimated to the Garda Síochána and to local authorities respectively that they are not to interfere with itinerants?
I have given no such direction to the Garda Síochána. It would not be my place to do so. As I have already pointed out, itinerants, whatever individual Deputies may think of individual itinerants, have the same rights as other citizens——
Deputies
Hear, hear.
——and it would be improper of the Garda Síochána to interfere with these people if they are not breaking the law.
If somebody were killed belonging to those shouting "hear, hear" it would be a different story.
(Cavan): Surely the Minister will agree——
Question No. 27.
(Cavan): ——that the undoubted Constitutional rights of itinerants should be exercised in such a way so as not to interfere with the Constitutional rights of other citizens of the State?
If itinerants commit offences, they are prosecuted in the same way as any other citizen would be prosecuted for the commission of an offence. As the Deputy is aware, a large number of prosecutions have been brought against itinerants in recent years.
I have called Question No. 27.
(Cavan): The Government have many pious hopes for the itinerants but nothing is being done about them. In the mean-time the itinerants can do as they wish.
They did not do as they wished in Galway.
(Interruptions.)