A WEXFORD Town based traveller has slammed the businesses who chose to close their doors during the removal and burial of the Connors family, describing the move as “very hurtful”.

Nan Furlong (nee Connors) who is originally from Drinagh but now living at Ferndale, Coolcotts, told this newspaper that the reaction to the visiting travellers for the burial has sent an upsetting message to those travellers based in Wexford permanently.

“The way businesses closed sent the message that travellers weren’t welcome in Wexford. Now I’m living in Wexford all my life and it made me feel like am I not welcome in my home town either,” said Mrs Furlong.

The decision by many establishments to close “created a prejudice,” she claimed.

She continued: “My sister was refused service in a well known shop in town. She’s born and bred in Wexford and she was turned away from a shop. There was such hysteria around visiting travellers that even those of us who have lived here all of our lives were made feel unwelcome. We’ll always be just the ‘tinkers’ in their eyes.”

While commending the initiative of those who made the family feel welcome at the St Joseph’s Community Centre after the burial service, she said that they “deserved something more than a community centre”.

“At the end of the day these people lost five members of their family and a community centre is the only place that they were welcome after all they had been through.”

It has been mooted by members of the travelling community locally that An Garda Síochána could have taken action to quell the concerns of local businesses and ensured that a “proper reception” was offered to the family.

“I’ve never seen as many guards in Wexford as I did last week with the funeral and the opera festival, so what would have been wrong with saying to a hotel owner, ‘here we’ll have a few undercover gardaí there on the day’?”

She continued: “It would have been low-key and we wouldn’t have known that they were guards so it wouldn’t have sent out the wrong message, but it would have given the business owners peace of mind. I’m not saying that anything would have happened, but it would have been better than just shutting the doors and leaving them just go to a community centre.”

She noted that she was once a “proud Wexford woman” but now she is “ashamed to wear the Wexford jersey”.

“I’d burn the purple and gold jersey now and that’s the God’s honest truth. It disgraces me that a family burying five of its own were made feel unwelcome,” she said.

The situation has been likened by many in the travelling community to the nativity story.

“Our Lord was born on a bed of straw. Our Lady knocked at doors and was told that there was no room at the inn. It was like that for the travelling people last week,” she said.

Mrs Furlong has become vocal on the issue of travellers’ rights as of late and revealed that since last week she has been approached by the advocacy group Mincéirs Whiden (Cant for Travellers Talking) People before Profit and Éirigí to work on campaigns relating to the issues highlighted during the burial.