Mr. Michael Walsh:

The frustration I would have is that any dialogue about talking this away from local authorities is not viable, if I am honest about it, because imposition will create greater resistance and greater problems. If it was a national entity, for example, doing it, I am pretty certain it would not work. It would be easy in some respects for the local authority system to get somebody else to do this because it is a tough space much of the time.

I do not wish to get into specifics, if the committee does not mind, and I will come back to Deputy Ó Broin, separately. I did not approve, and my officials did not make, an application for funding that we did not have to make without good intentions and a really serious intention of making it happen. However, we could not make it happen. There is something inherently wrong when that is the case. People can say it was incompetence on our part but I can assure members there were other forces. That is the way I would put it.

In the current year, it was a timing issue and the money has been spent and the work has been done but it is difficult. That is the point. It is difficult because there is so much resistance. We do most things in our lives as statutory entities with the acquiescence of the majority of the people and part of the problem here is that if one does not have the acquiescence of the majority, it is very difficult to get it done and because the resistance comes from everywhere. It is not only on one specific Part 8 application. Every element of the equation is resisted. That can be seen in some of the larger statutory processes - in planning and elsewhere, whether it is Shell to Sea or otherwise - where the acquiescence of the community is not there in substantial form. The whole thing then is neutralised across a whole load of spaces.

The challenge is to change the dialogue and to change the reality because we have got to get to the point that both the settled community and Traveller community can come to an understanding and an accommodation that can allow these things to happen in a reasonably normal fashion. One can say it is a statutory imposition or the State has failed but society is failing because it is society that is actually creating that resistance. How can that be changed? Let us use the example of drink driving. We changed society's attitude to drink driving and did so through investment and by arguing and generating debate.