Under the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act, 1998, a local authority has powers to remove an unauthorised Traveller encampment from a public place where it is located within five miles of an approved halting site, provided alternative accommodation is available on an approved site to which the unauthorised encampment can be moved. Subject to the same proviso regarding available alternative accommodation, there is also a general power for a local authority to remove an unauthorised encampment from a public place where this is unfit for human habitation or is likely to interfere with public or private amenities or constitutes a health hazard.
Where an unauthorised Traveller encampment is located in a public place within one mile of approved Traveller accommodation, it may be removed to a location which is not less than one mile from such approved accommodation, irrespective of whether alternative accommodation is available. These measures were designed to give assurance that areas in which official Traveller accommodation is provided should not become a focus for illegal encampments.
These legislative measures may not have fully anticipated the type of large scale movement of Travellers referred to in the question and which have raised concerns in recent years. Nonetheless, local authorities should use to the full their existing powers under the 1998 legislation, together with the range of powers they already enjoy under, in particular, litter, waste management and road traffic legislation, to secure abatement of the nuisance presented by large scale illegal encampments. I am pressing local authorities to use the powers available to them, and I am also examining the extent to which the existing legislation might usefully be amended.
The recent incidents of unauthorised encampments, in some cases by Travellers who have accommodation available to them, appear to raise issues wider than accommodation matters proper to the Housing Acts, such as issues of public order, intimidation and trespass. I have taken up this matter with my colleague, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, with a view to exploring whether this type of incident may require to be dealt with on a broader front. He has referred these issues to the monitoring committee on the implementation of the 1995 report of the task force on the Travelling community, which in turn has set up a sub-group consisting of representatives of my Department, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the social partners and Traveller organisations to examine the issue. Its terms of reference are to produce by a consensus approach a report on the issue of trespass by Traveller encampments and to advise what can be done to minimise the negative impact of large scale movements of Traveller groups. This examination will also extend to the adequacy of the existing range of powers available to deal with such incidents, including enforcement issues, and any changes to such powers which may be considered necessary.