Dublin Opinion

The Irish traveller shooting season is to be regulated from now on, according to officials close to the government. Instead of shooting wild travellers, the government is to press for the introduction of traveller farms, where travellers can be raised in a controlled and humane environment, before being let go to knock on the doors of farming folk. The scheme will remain rural-based, at least during the trial period.

Although the practise of shooting wild, untrained, travellers will continue, it is hoped that the government scheme will lead to a change in current practises, as well as appeasing some of the more vocal opponents of traveller-baiting.

Critics of the scheme disagree. ‘These travellers ain’t badgers you know – for a start they’re far more harder to kill’, said one fine Gael TD. ‘And sure regulation takes the fun out of it. I mean, there’s no point sitting in the dark all night in your shed if you know that some house-trained traveller is going to knock up on your door in broad daylight and ask you for some scrap. You need to be caught unawares. And anyways , you’d have to arm the house travellers to make it interesting. Everyone knows that an unarmed wild traveller is still armed with that wild traveller streak. Once that’s bred out of them, sure you’d need to give them pointy sticks or something just to even it up.’

The makers of the traveller video game, ‘Blood Wedding’, have also criticised the government’s plans. ‘These tofu-eating, sandal-wearing, house travellers are no good to anyone. House travellers are smaller, more docile, and easier to kill. There’d be no beating around the head with a stick twenty times before shooting them in the back with a house traveller. The first shot’s always going to get them. In our business, that means our players would be reaching level 16 – or North Mayo – in fifteen minutes. Utterly, utterly useless.’

Despite these criticisms, the government is to press ahead with legislation in the New Year. ‘It’s just further proof that those boyos up in Dublin just don’t understand rural life’ said one local Fine Gael TD. ‘They have got to realise that living in Dublin – with its drive-by drug murders, street muggings, rapes, kidnappings, house break-ins, over 15,000 full-time heroin addicts chasing other people’s disposable income, and an overstretched and unreliable police force - is nothing compared to the dangers of rural life. We need to be fully trained on shooting wild travellers in order to protect our EU-subsidised farms and set-aside land from those dole-cheating wild travellers. House traveller shooting is just going to take the edge off our aim.’