This article is from page 7 of the 2013-03-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 7 JPG
CLARE County Council have declined to conduct an audit of “black spots” in North Clare where illegal parking and encampments are endemic during the summer months.
According to councillors at yesterday’s North Clare Area Meeting of Clare County Council, antisocial behaviour is becoming a serious problem at certain illegal camping site in the Burren area – with the meeting told of a doorway of one home in the Tubber area being used as a toilet by illegal campers.
This follows a joint motion by Joe Arkins (FG) and Michael Kelly (FF), seeking that staking to protect black spot areas from illegal campers this summer.
“These people just want to flout the law. Many of these people are in rented property paid for my rent allowance, they have no need to be homeless, they decide to take to the roads for the summer months,” said Cllr Arkins.
“I think we need to look at possible areas that lend themselves to overnight camping and illegal encamp- ments.
“I think, rather than going to court to move people along, that we should where possible come up with an engineering solution to insure that this problem does not occur in the first place.
“I think an audit should be done – we can no longer have two fingers held up to us.”
Cllr Michael Kelly also called for the National Roads Authority (NRA) to improve the fencing on excess land beside the Gort/Crusheen bypass.
“I think the legislation is far too week.
“We should be getting legislation to insure that this sort of think does not happen,” he said.
“We need the NRA to come up to their responsibility and insure that these areas are fenced off properly.
“I know of a situation of people who were parked in front of our local hurling field [in Tubber] and a person camped illegally walked down into the front of a house of a local woman and he urinated right in on top of the door.”
Responding to the motion, Senior Council Engineer Tom Tiernan, said that discouraging illegal camping on one area will increase it in others.
“There are many areas throughout North Clare which, theoretically, could accommodate authorised parking and encampments and therefore, to ensure that adequate provision is made to prevent authorised overnight encampment would involve considerable expenses and allocation of resources that haven’t been provided for,” he said.
“To cater for some of these areas would result in an increase of vulnerability in respect of areas that may now be regarded as least vulnerable.”