David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief because a lot of ground has been covered. I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív, and as I said here last week, we have got to approach this in two ways. There is the immediate and what we can do now but then there is the longer-term stuff. If we focus on the long-term stuff we will still be here in five years' time. A lot of progress has been made with education and we got that from NTRIS but more work needs to be done. We also need to do more about employment and health.

Today, we are here to talk about accommodation. As I said last week, and I completely agree with what has been said here, there should not be any loan involved for trailers and Travellers should be treated in the same way as people receiving social housing pay rent. It should be rental; full stop.

I think that is a very strong recommendation we should make straight away. Why should one group of people be treated differently from another group? I know we have loan schemes, but the choice should be there.

I like the Cena model; it is excellent. The committee should support it in any way we can. Unlike NTRIS, which I chaired for some years, which was quite frustrating, this is a public debate and we have a lot of authority in the committee to invite people such as Ministers and officials before the committee. We have done that and asked them to account for what they are doing and not doing. If we do not keep asking the right questions and inviting in people who make decisions, the file that we are talking about will sink to the bottom given the many other pressing issues. Our job is to keep renewing the issues by bringing people in, highlighting the issues and keeping at it.

National Traveller MABS is doing a great job as well. It should keep that going. If we can support it, we should do so.

It is good to meet Mr. Collins again. He mentioned the introduction of an ethnic identifier across all routine administrative data sets in local authorities to be rolled out in line with human rights standards in his submission. I know that local authorities already ask a question to identify whether a person is a Traveller, not a Traveller, or would prefer not to say. From other interactions I have had, I am told that for their own reasons a lot of people prefer not to say. That probably causes a problem. Could Mr. Collins elaborate a little more on what he means? It is happening already in local authorities, which have to do it under the 1998 Act. What else does he need for this particular request?