'It affects everyone': Travellers on the impact of violent feuds

RTÉ News​

3 days ago

Around a dozen men enter the housing scheme in Co Clare, one has a gun, others are armed with bats and slash hooks.
They are videoed by another member of the gang so the footage could be later shared on social media.
The audio on the 83-second video is a series of dull thuds, as wooden bats meet car metal and shatter-resistant windscreens, followed by the clink of breaking glass as swinging slash hooks batter windows of cars, houses, and mobile homes.
None of the residents show themselves during the mayhem.
Then the gunman, heavyset and dressed in a light-grey hoodie, dark bottoms, and a dark baseball cap, lifts his rifle and shoots into a house.
Another man roars "c'mon, c'mon" and his gang starts to retreat, passing an upturned set of children's goalposts as they leave the site almost casually.
Assorted toys are on the footpath, plastic cars just about big enough for a toddler to sit on, a pink scooter and a pink plastic chair - objects of innocence incongruous with the scene of hate and terror.
Social media feuding
The video is from 2023 at a Traveller-specific housing scheme in north Clare. Social media users will probably be familiar with similar videos showing feud-related attacks.
Most get little attention, despite the levels of violence involved and the scale of terror inflicted on the victims.
Just last week, a video circulated by the Irish Examiner showed cars and a house in Cork City being smashed up by a gang carrying slash hooks.
In the last 12 months, there have also been significant feud-related incidents in counties with simmering feuds such as Limerick, Sligo, Galway, Longford, Westmeath, Dublin.
These are part of what Traveller organisations say is a growing problem of interfamily and intra-family feuding that is becoming more violent.
One Traveller rights activist, who declined to talk on the record, told Prime Time that feuding is "tearing our community apart."
Last year, research published by three leading Traveller organisations began with a stark line.
"Inter-family violence is a pervasive problem affecting Traveller individuals and their families, with far reaching consequences for the entire Traveller community, that include mental health difficulties, imprisonment, injury and in some instances, death."
Also last year, the Traveller Mediation Service wrote "it is important to state that violence is not part of Traveller culture," but that inter-family conflict has "reverberations for the entire Traveller community, where backing down is seen as weakness, and a loss of honour."
Feuding between or within families "affects everyone," said Colette Joyce, Secretary of the Louth Traveller Movement, "because we're all related and very closely related, it's horrible for our older generation, for people who have grown up together as brothers and sisters nearly, it could be first cousins, second cousins..."
Social media is now widely viewed as being responsible for inflaming and exacerbating conflict, feud incidents are often recorded by the aggressors as well as victims or bystanders.
"As soon as it's happening, it's being recorded and you have access immediately all over the world," said Nell McDonagh, Culture and Heritage officer for Meath Travellers Workshops.
"Whether you're living in Germany, whether you're living in Navan, you have access to it immediately, before any peacekeepers or mediators can get involved, it's all over the world."
'Call out' videos - in which one person invites another to a fight - can attract hundreds of thousands of views, yet social media posts reflecting a positive image of the community typically get hundreds of views.
Impact on Travellers
Reporting on the Traveller feuding problem is a delicate subject because Travellers feel routinely stigmatised by media portrayals. Yet, it is a significant criminal problem with a severe impact on its victims who are overwhelmingly Travellers.
The Irish Traveller Movement declined a request to be interviewed for a Prime Time report on the issue, instead issuing a statement on behalf of itself and 11 other Traveller organisations.
The statement asked for RTÉ "not to go ahead with this programme due to its impact on the community as a whole, many of whom have entirely no connection to the issues being discussed tonight."
It also said that the programme would reinforce, "damaging stereotypes that contribute to racism and discrimination."
On the other hand, dozens of Travellers cooperated with the research for the programme.
"It's not dirty to talk about feuding. It's okay to want to resolve it, and it's okay that we take responsibility as well for our actions as a community," said Senator Eileen Flynn, who is a Traveller.
"But it's also important that the Government takes responsibilities for their ill treatment for many years to our community," Senator Flynn added.
Regional feuds
Co Clare is one of the counties with a significant feuding problem. Since 2023, An Garda Síochána has been running Operation Féilire to combat it.
Prime Time has learned that gardaí currently estimate there are 13 active feuds in the county.
"Feuding has been a big issue in Clare in recent years," said Páraic McMahon, Head of News at the Clare Echo.
It's a "peaks-and-troughs-type situation. When it gets bad, things get very bad, things get out of control."
He said that "as recently as 2023 up to 10 Traveller families were feuding in Ennis alone."
Fianna Fáil TD for Clare, Cathal Crowe, said it's a major public concern.
"I feel sorry for a lot of the women and the children caught up in the line of fire," he said.
There are "fine, fine families" in the Clare Traveller community, he said, "but there are some families entrenched in this feuding warfare, and the youngsters are being brought up behind them to continue on and to carry that feuding on."
At Christmas, footage of an incident in Ennis was circulated widely on social media showing two rival groups clashing and cars being rammed.
It was "a pretty scary event for a lot of people," Mr McMahon said.
After that incident, Mr Crowe wrote to Garda Commissioner Drew Harris urging him to "fully utilise" the Armed Response Unit and bring in gardai from outside the local division.
Nomadic traditions
Feuding is not in any sense a uniquely Traveller problem.
In modern times, violent feuds have erupted between drug-dealing criminal gangs in Limerick and Dublin. Historically, organised faction-fighting or brawls between groups connected by family or parish were a widespread problem, particularly in Munster.
However, while drugs and money can be a factor in some Traveller feuds, they tend to be mainly inter-family or intra-family disputes, and often around abstract issues of family honour.
"We live in family groups. Our social life is always done in family," Nell McDonagh said, noting that wider family groupings could "extend to a couple of thousand people."
"In the past, we were nomadic and we had the freedom and the ability to move around Ireland very, very freely. If there was a dispute or an issue that might affect more than one or two people, the family would get up and they would move to another camp," Ms McDonagh added.
However, getting up and leaving is rarely an option nowadays partly because in 2002 the State responded to problems arising from unauthorised encampments on public land by effectively outlawing the Traveller nomadic lifestyle.
Nowadays, Travellers who stop on public land, as they would have done for centuries, risk prosecution and confiscation of their property by Gardaí.
"It's against the law for Travellers to travel in this country," Senator Flynn said.
"It's remarkable to me when I go to Sligo, Donegal, see people in their campers, white, middle class settled people in their campers, and they're drawing trailers, and they can park up anywhere they want and use the services," she added.
If members of the Traveller community were to do the same, Senator Flynn says, "gardaí would be called. And that's absolutely taking away our way of life and the whole community's way of life."
Conflicts are consistently ending up in a cycle of violence and retaliation.
Last year the publicly funded Traveller Mediation Service said that in its experience that "disputes over the last number of years within the community have worsened and become more violent, with increasing use of weapons, especially petrol-bombs and guns."
Operation Stola
The Traveller Mediation Service declined a request for interview, but according to its most recently published annual reports, it mediated in 388 disputes in the 2019-2023 period across at least 28 counties.
Included were disputes between neighbours, accommodation issues, ongoing interfamily conflicts, and issues with agencies.
One of those counties was Longford, where feuding has been an intermittent problem for decades.
"I remember very well Cemetery Sunday in July 2019. We had the police helicopter in the sky. We had the armed response unit. We even have the dog unit, and this was for a mass in a cemetery," Longford Fianna Fáil councillor Seamus Butler said.
"We nearly went over the brink," he added.
From 2019, gardaí set up Operation Stola to target feuding in Longford. After the first three years, the Department of Justice reported 6,761 incidents associated with the operation, 206 arrests and 454 charges.
In May 2022, then Fine Gael Minister of State Frankie Feighan told the Dáil that "the majority of violent crimes occurring in the Longford district in the year to date have related to feuding families."
While there are still serious feud-related incidents from time to time in and around Longford, the situation has calmed.
Since the peak in 2019, Cllr Butler said, "we've had over 36 raids" by the Garda Criminal Assets Bureau.
"Houses have been confiscated. An awful lot of luxury goods, cash, and drugs have been seized in Longford. A lot of these people thought they were untouchable. They are now in deep trouble with their properties," Cllr Butler said.
Longford Chamber president Fulton Grant said that "more garda presence" and the imprisonment of key figures in the feuding had an effect.
"We seem to have got a good handle on it here," Mr Grant said.
But there are other non-law-and-order factors, too.
"It's engagement on all sides," Mr Grant said, describing how several female Travellers were a calming influence and a bridge within the community who are willing to communicate.
Property destruction
Research published by Traveller organisations last year titled 'The Impact of Traveller Interfamily Conflict on Individuals and Families,' noted the effect on the health of Travellers.
It said feuding has "evolved to typically involve weapons, ramming of vehicles, destruction of property, that includes the setting of sites and homes on fire."
"It can result in loss of life, severe mental-health difficulties, and families forced to leave their homes," the research paper continued.
In Co Clare over a decade ago, feuding resulted in such significant property destruction that an entire site for Traveller-specific accommodation was razed by Clare County Council and a social housing estate built in its place.
A Google Earth image from 2009 shows six units at the Ashline site on the outskirts of Ennis. Another image shows that, by 2011, two of them were destroyed.
Clare County Council's 2014-2018 Traveller Accommodation Programme noted that, "At end of 2013 the group housing schemes at Ashline and [nearby] Beechpark lie completely vacant, having been the subject of repeated arson attacks to the extent that insurance cover no longer applies. In 2013 alone four houses were substantially damaged by fire."
"These were well-built, perfect houses. They've been smashed, burnt, windows put in," said Deputy Crowe. In 2018, the council demolished the entire site, deciding not to refurbish again.
"It makes me very angry," said Nell McDonagh, "because I think it's so unjust that a certain small number of people can destroy opportunities such as accommodation. We need to deal with the people who are responsible for this."
"The vulnerable people, the people who needed accommodation, they were the ones that missed out there on opportunities. The people responsible for the violent behaviour; they don't care," Ms McDonagh added.
Lateral violence
Some connect the feuding problem to a concept called lateral violence, which has been studied among ethnic communities in other countries, including the Sami people of Northernmost Europe and the Aboriginal people of Australia.
Lateral violence is "when people from the same community direct their rage, anger, frustrations toward people from their own community and that rage and anger and frustration comes from being oppressed," Dr Tia Whyman, Research Fellow at Murdoch University in Australia told Prime Time.
"So they direct it towards themselves and their community because it's safer, rather than direct it to the people that are doing the oppressing," Dr Whyman added.
"There are lots of different types of conflicts, but for it to be lateral violence, there needs to be some form of oppression," according to Dr Kristina Sehlin MacNeil, Associate Professor in Sami Studies, Umeå University, Sweden.
The theory of lateral violence should not be used as "an excuse to behave badly towards one's peers," Dr Sehlin MacNeil said, adding that it can be useful in analysing the roots of peer-on-peer violence and finding solutions to it.
Traveller pride
How much the concept can be applied to the issue of Traveller feuding is debatable, but what is clear is that Travellers are a hard-pressed ethnic minority who are often unjustly treated.
"The biggest challenges facing our community at the moment are mental health, addiction, homelessness, and unemployment," said Senator Flynn.
"I'm thinking of suicide, schizophrenia, other mental health problems like depression, anxiety. It's overwhelming, actually, within our community."
Surveys suggest that prejudice against Travellers in Ireland is very widespread.
For example, the National Traveller Community Survey 2017 found only 9% would have a Traveller as a family member. Only 17% of just over 1,000 respondents said they would employ a Traveller.
Senator Eileen Flynn said she experienced discrimination after applying for a job in care over a decade ago following a period of work experience.
"I was brilliant at the job and I loved it," she said, "but once they hear the address was Labre Park, a halting site, the job was no longer available. I had great skills, but the barrier was I was a member of the Traveller community."
Despite the barriers, she said, her pride in her community remains unwavering. "I couldn't ask to be from a better community," she said. "It's the love, the family, how the community take care of each other."
Like many Travellers, Colette Joyce said there is too much media focus on negative issues in the community, such as criminality and feuding.
"I suppose negativity sells," she said.
"The issue for me is that all Travellers are painted as the same. We're all put down as the one. So if a Traveller at the far end of the country, does something, it automatically becomes my problem and I'm blamed for the same thing," she said.
"I might not even know that person. And that is just something that I would like to see eradicated."