Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have two small points. Obviously, there has been a very public debate about the more excessive language used by Peter Casey during his presidential election campaign.

One of the things that concerns me, however, is that in my experience much of the anti-Traveller prejudice that is most effective is the anti-Traveller prejudice that does not allow itself to be seen or heard publicly. It is what happens privately between certain councillors and managers and it uses a language which is a world away from Peter Casey's language and would insist that it is not prejudicial or designed to prevent Travellers from getting access to the accommodation they need and deserve. We need to be mindful also that the most dangerous anti-Traveller prejudice is that which vehemently protests that it is not prejudice at all, but is something else. I only say that because that is the stuff that has a much more negative day-to-day impact on the delivery of projects. That raises a challenge. Quantifying and proving that is much more difficult but it is important to state that. I am not at all disagreeing with Deputy Barry, who is right in what he is saying, but it needs to be named.

The second thing is a small bit of the picture but it is still worth noticing. We have spoken here about the global spend but, for example, if one looks at the spreadsheet provided by the Department for the Traveller caravan loan scheme, it is the same picture. One of the problems we are experiencing at the moment is that even in local authorities - South Dublin County Council is one example - where elected members, against some resistance from management, manage to push through a budget allocation for a caravan loan scheme, they get into all sorts of protracted arguments with management about the implementation of that scheme and the rules that are required. South Dublin County Council agreed a budget for Traveller accommodation before this Dáil was elected, and when a number of us were still members of the local authority, but not a single euro has been made available to people because of arguments over what is the best way to implement that scheme in terms of the financial rules and regulations. This might an element the expert group might look at also because clearly there are implementation issues with the loan scheme even though it is only a small bit of the overall picture.