Earlier this week there was a programme on RTE1 concerning the treatment of certain traveller families,which brought me back the years.
Many decades ago I had responsibility for deciding on what should happen goods smuggled into the country and those who smuggled them in.
It was not a job I liked.
Included in the remedies for smuggled goods was the seizure of the goods and the subsequent sale of them by the State.
On one occassion an assiduous Customs Officer had come across a smuggled caravan in which lived a traveller woman with a young child.
My permission to seize the caravan was sought.
I refused point blank and suffered much derision from certain colleagues as a consequence.
I have no regrets.
I lived for many years in Blanchardstown and its hinterland and was actually robbed by a young traveller I was good to.
This is the constituency of Leo Varadaker and Joan Burton ,a current head of Fine Gael and a former head of the Labour Party.
As far as memory serves Halting Bays for Travellers were sited as far away from the public gaze as possible ,adjacent to Mulhuddart Graveyard and aklongside the railway track in the butt end of Porterstown.
Out of sight and out of mind.
The programme above cited showed the totrure and persecution heaped upon individual families who had no where else to go and provided shelter by means of a caravan on public owned land.
What we saw was heaps of Council Officials,hired heavies and Police men and women
threatening to seize the caravans of men ,women and children uinless they moved on to nowhere.
NEEDLESS TO SAY NOT ONE OF THESE OFFICIALS WERE PREPARED TO MEET THE CAMERA AND ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY THEIR OBNOXIOUS ACTIONS.COUNTY MANAGERS ,COUNCIL OFFICIALS AND BAILIFFS WENT AND HID FROM PUBLIC VIEW.
Shame on them,shame on those hidden inhumane bullies who set these enforcers on these unfortunate people and hadn't the guts to explain their obnoxious activities to the programme makers and shame on us as a Nation for tolerating such hateful and inhumane treatment of fellow human beings.
Were you to treat dogs in a similar manner you would be prosexcuted for cruelty to animals.
No wonder Leo and Joan were punished by the electorate.
And the presence of so many Police to see to such evictions and seizures from the poorest of the poor gives the lie to the frequentlt cited excuse regarding the shortahge of police to tackle those who mutilate the youth of Ireland in the successful enterprise of covering the entire land with a covering of coke and a pklentitude of skunk and other health destroying drugs.
Let the Polis chase the drug dealers and stop wasting time on evictions such as witnessed on the programme.
