Ms Ronnie Fay:

The national Traveller accommodation consultative committee was established under the auspices of the former Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, and, as the committee knows, it publishes annual accounts. The 2015 report is available online, and that is where I have pulled some of the most recent statistics from. The last published report I received was for 2013, which is why I referred to that report.

There are a number of issues. The data is presented in such a way as to hide the analysis and reality. Our argument is that it needs to be much clearer in order that people realise what is behind the data. We are calling for an ethnic identifier in schemes such as HAP and other administrative information systems so that we can determine where Travellers, Roma and other minority ethnic groups are living to determine whether they are over-represented in particular sectors or areas of provision. The overall data is quite problematic in terms of how it is presented.

I have provided a background paper which is much more detailed, but I do not know whether the committee has seen it. It needs to be recognised that the demographics of the Traveller community are significantly different from those of the general population. Some 42% of Travellers are under 15 years of age and only 3% are aged over 65 years. There is a significant youth population. If we do not make provision and plan for communities, we will be hostages to fortune in the future. It is a bad use of resources.

The all-Ireland Traveller health study found that the composition of Traveller households varies. Some 20% of Traveller women have had five or more children, compared to 2.6% of the general population. It is ironic that the youngest families who have the greatest number of children are living in the smallest spaces with the fewest facilities. That has a major impact on the quality of life of Travellers and their life expectancy and mortality and morbidity rates. That context needs to be taken into account.

I refer to funding. I attended the hearing of the Universal Periodic Review on Ireland in Geneva last week. The State report noted that there had been an increase in funding from €4 million to €5.5 million. That looks great, but what it did not say was that there had been a 90% decrease between 2008 and 2013. In our experience, funding was never really the problem, even though it may be a problem now because of the impact of austerity. Traditionally, the budgets were never spent.

A total of 36% was unspent. We believe that is to do with political will, local prejudice, racism, objections by local residents and a lack of sanctions by-----