Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 8 March 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Provision of Traveller Accommodation: Discussion

9:30 am

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted we are discussing this issue. The number of disgraceful situations around the country speaks for itself. We have a major problem. We had the Carrickmines situation which was one of the greatest avoidable tragedies that took place in this country. The aftermath of it, when the alternative accommodation was opposed by the local community, told us a lot.

The Bishop's Field halting site in Galway was found to be overcrowded on foot of an examination of it. Nothing is happening about it. There is a worse case in that a temporary halting site was provided on the Curragh Line beside a very large disused tip head, which had been used for Galway city for many years, and the Minister of State will be aware of the dangers associated with that. Galway County Council got planning permission of three years' duration for it. I supported that application at the time. The council did nothing in that three-year period, and a month prior to the end of the three-year period, it applied for a new permanent permission on an unsuitable site. We had the unusual situation of the Travellers and the local community traders going into the council and stating that the site could not be made permanent but that they accepted there should be an extension of the permission because there was nowhere else for them to go. They were literally put up against the wall. That was about four years ago. An Bord Pleanála scarified them and gave Galway City Council one year - the site is in Galway County Council's jurisdiction - to resolve the issue. Three years later the council has been in default on that. I must be critical of Galway County Council as it has not pursued enforcement in that respect with the same energy with which it would pursue other people who broke the law.

We have to face up to the facts. We cannot pussyfoot around this issue. There are local authorities throughout the country that will do anything to avoid facing up to this issue and then they wonder why there are illegal sites. I am not talking about the illegal one that this council has, which is the ultimate disgrace, but the reason people in other circumstances are forced to have unofficial halting sites. A procession of Travellers call to the clinic I hold in Galway every Monday. They find it harder than others to get private rented accommodation. Families with children in any event find it harder than families without children to get rented accommodation. I apologise for being long in making this point but I am sure the same issue is replicated around the country. There is also a feeling among those in the local authorities that do the job well that they will get a non-solvable problem because people will migrate from the local authority areas that are avoiding their responsibilities into the areas that are dealing with what they should be dealing with.

I believe in solutions to problems. We should stand back and take stock of a problem. The first consideration is the Traveller accommodation programme, TAP. For the moment, that should be left as it is. The local authorities should be allowed to prepare the TAP in the same way that they prepare the county plans. I presume that is subject to oversight by the Minister of State's Department or by the new planning regulator just as the rest of the plan will be. However, we must face up to a reality. In more than 90% of all other planning proposals, once the local authority elected members are finished with the proposed planning, the decision on individual planning proposals is not a matter for the local authority members. I would not altogether agree with Deputy Barry in that it is an unusual feature - it is exclusively because we are talking about local authority lands - that the permission is granted by a vote of the members as opposed to an independent body, namely, the executives in the council acting off their own bat or, if it is contentious, inevitably, An Bord Pleanála. Therefore, my firm belief is that this is not working. We threw money at this issue in the 2000s, as the Minister of State rightly pointed out, because we were told that a lack of funding was the problem, but that did not work. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that planning for Traveller housing should go to where most planning proposals go if they are contentious, namely, to An Bord Pleanála, and it would be legally obliged to have regard to the TAP in making its decisions.

I hear about a long process being involved.

In County Galway the planning application for the Apple data centre is still very contentious. The vast majority of people want it to go ahead. In looking at the rules, the Government was very quick to state it would make adjustments. The reality is this Traveller planning issue has been going on for years and we have not made any decisions. Wishing and hoping people will do what people will not do is a waste of time. I am not convinced many local authority members want this particular power because, let us be honest about it, many of their constituents would rather close their eyes to a human rights injustice than see a hard decision made that might in some way impinge on them. It is time for decisions. If I thought we would get a decision and a process in place by the autumn of this year, I would be pleased, knowing the way the system works. Beyond this would be totally unacceptable.

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