Rabbitte in tangle over Sligo and Travellers

The Labour leader made a false allegation against Declan Bree but his suspicions of double standards in Sligo may not have been misplaced. By Vincent Browne

An internal Labour Party disciplinary inquiry is to take place soon, following a complaint by Sligo councillor, Declan Bree (Labour), against Pat Rabbitte, over a letter the Labour leader had published in The Irish Times, critical of Bree. The letter incorrectly claimed Bree had used his position as mayor of Sligo to stop a Traveller accommodation site being located on his own electoral area.

When he publicly criticised the leading member of his party in Sligo, Pat Rabbitte had not contacted Declan Breen in advance to ascertain the facts, but it appears he was correct in suggesting the issue of Labour councillors and Traveller accommodation in Sligo was more complex than Declan Bree had suggested previously.

In February of this year, Sligo council voted down the Traveller accommodation programme proposed by officials. Declan Bree, the serving mayor, voted for the programme, but his two Labour colleagues on the council, Jim McGarry and Veronica Cawley, voted against. Subsequent to that vote, Declan Bree issued a statement describing the vote as "disgraceful" and asking: "How can anyone who claims to share the values of the Labour movement, or how can anyone with an ounce of compassion, tolerate such a situation".

The Traveller accommodation programme had proposed the building of a halting site beside the Maugherboy estate in the Sligo West ward. It also proposed building a halting site in the North ward, but without specifying the locations and there was a proposal to house newly-wed Travellers in the East ward, which is Declan Bree's ward.

There were nearly 200 objections to the one specific proposal in the plan in relation to the halting site near the Maugherboy estate. The objection was founded on the contention that the roads network into the estate could not support a further population increase in the area. However, there are over 600 houses in the estate, between two private estates and three local authority estates, and the proposal was to site 11 Traveller families on the halting site. The local Traveller movement could not see how an additional 11 families would overload appreciably the roads network.

When this came up for discussion during the debate on the Traveller accommodation programme in February, Declan Bree suggested that acces to the halting site could be accessed by way of the Sligo relief road, thereby dealing with the objection concerning roads infrastructure. However, this proposal was defeated. What is surprising is that at that stage Declan Bree himself voted to delete the proposal to locate a halting site near Maugherboy from the plan altogether.

So he himself was instrumental in removing from the plan the only specific proposal on a halting site.

However, he voted in favour of the remainder of the plan dealing with the accommodation for newly-weds in his own ward and the proposals for halting sites on unidentified locations in the North ward. One of the North ward proposals was to accommodate a single family who had lived in a car park with no amenities for up to 20 years. His colleagues, along with a majority on the council, voted to veto the accommodation programme as a whole.

However, it also emerges that during the lifetime of the previous council – the one which went out of office in June 2002 – Declan Bree had voted to exclude further halting sites on the North ward, because it already had three halting sites. In addition it emerges that he had voted against a proposal in the late 1990s to put a halting site in his own ward on a site that partly coincided with the location of an old factory, Dental Mirror. He acknowledges he did so, saying this was because the site would have been partly on open green, which the council was determined to preserve.

So the situation is not that two Labour councillors voted against the Traveller accommodation programme: all three councillors, including Declan Bree, voted to delete from the programme the only specific proposal on a halting site and Declan Bree had previously voted to exclude halting sites from the only ward designated as a location for a halting site, the North ward.

Declan Bree was Labour's standard-bearer in Sligo and was TD for the area from 1992 to 1997. He has had many disagreements with Pat Rabbitte since the latter became leader of the Labour Party in 2002. Bree is against the coalition deal with Fine Gael. He views himself as a "Connolly republican socialist" in contrast to Rabbitte who, despite his Workers Party incarnation, no longer sees himself as republican and nowadays rarely describes himself as socialist. Bree is also staunchly opposed to the use of Shannon by US military aircraft and he believes Rabbitte is lukewarm on the issue. He has said he will not contest a general election for Labour while Rabbitte is leader.

Labour has selected Jim McGarry as its candidate to stand in the constituency in the next election. McGarry defected to Labour from Fine Gael three years ago. He says he did so because of policy disagreements, others say he did so because of personality clashes. McGarry did vote in favour of a halting site in the North ward some years ago but is generally viewed as anti-Traveller.