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

I thank Professor Norris and her team for the report. I commend the group on turning around the report in a speedy timeframe given everybody was working in a voluntary capacity while also doing other work. However, I will express a degree of frustration, although not with anybody presenting to us. It is important to recall the origin of this expert group report was the report on the Traveller accommodation programmes produced by Professor Norris and others produced for the Housing Agency at the request of the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and published in January 2017. We were then told in 2018 that an expert group would be established to review that research and come up with recommendations. The group was established in September 2018 and the report was published this summer. As Traveller accommodation is an issue in which the committee has taken an interest and, as many members have been very vocal about it, in a good way, it is incumbent on the committee to send out the signal today that what we want now is speedy action from Government in the implementation of the recommendations. We cannot allow two good reports to be left gathering dust awaiting action. One of the key actions that needs to come out of this meeting, and our meeting with the Minister in a couple of weeks, is a commitment to a speedy timeline such that everybody knows what actions will be taken by Government, when they are going to be taken and in what way. It is only in this way we will move this issue on.

It is worthwhile reiterating that there is still a chronic underspend in Traveller accommodation budgets. There was a 45% underspend in respect of the 2017 budget. In every other area of social housing, there was an overspend that year, yet the Traveller accommodation budget was underspent. The underspend for the following year was 44% and ten local authorities spent nothing that year. While we do not have updated figures for this year, at the end of the first quarter, only 18% of the Traveller accommodation budget had been spent. The problem is chronic, and getting worse. It is important to emphasise that the majority what is being spent is being expended on refurbishments rather than new units. The refurbished units are important but the spend in this area highlights that the new units that are needed are not being provided, which is the reason homelessness among Traveller families is much higher than for others.

I support all 32 recommendations. While I am uncomfortable supporting some of them, I will support them and I encourage the Government to implement them. I also have some questions on them. I believe the recommendations relating to building the evidence base and establishing need should be implemented immediately. For example, there is no reason the identifier for allowing Traveller families to state a priority of preference-need in transfers from HAP and RAS could not be done immediately. There is no reason the Minister could not have that implemented before the end of the year. I am interested to know how the witnesses would like to see the legislation relating to Part 8, section 183 and An Bord Pleanála, work because if the Minister decides to enact those, which I hope he does, they will come before this committee. It is important, therefore, that the committee would have a clear understanding of how they witnesses would like the legislation and the operation of those legislative changes to work. These are the areas with which I am most uncomfortable because I am a strong advocate for allowing local authorities have maximum power. However, the evidence that local authorities have abused those powers is strong and if they are going to continue to do so, we will have to take them away from them, even on a temporary basis. I would welcome more detail on those recommendations.

On the strategic policy committees, SPCs, and Traveller accommodation, we are all former local authority and strategic policy committee members, I would welcome more detail on how the witnesses would like the SPCs to operate.

That would be useful because it might be something that would require a legislative change to the housing Acts that we can address.

On the State-wide agency and authorities for that transformation of the national Traveller accommodation consultative committee, could the witnesses give the committee more information on the exact role they would see it have? The Traveller representative bodies have made strong representations to us that it would have executive functions and would become a delivery body, so to speak. The witnesses do not go that far in their report but where would they like to see that body evolve? What powers would they like to see it have to do the kind of things they referred to in their opening statement?