Professor Michelle Norris:

I thank Senator Boyhan for his comments. I will deal with the ethnic identifier aspect first. An ethnic identifier would have to be voluntary under the general data protection regulation, GDPR. People always mention that, but it does mean it would have to be voluntary. We had extensive discussions with local authority social workers who interact with Travellers and have detailed and in-depth knowledge of the Traveller community. They told us that some Travellers did not wish to identify as Travellers and obviously that is their right.

We face the problem that it is difficult to monitor how many Travellers are getting into accommodation and the level of need. An ethnic identifier would address those issues. We also suggested other changes where Travellers could identify a preference for the type of accommodation they wanted as in standard housing at No. 1, a halting site at No. 2 etc. The Traveller representative bodies in particular suggested to us that Travellers felt pressured into always identifying standard social housing as the first option, whether they wanted it or not. That was because they felt their chance of getting halting site accommodation was so poor.

We had meetings with the Traveller representative bodies. I do not wish to speak on their behalf but my impression of their views is that they support the ethnic voluntary identifier. The data are so weak that it is hard to know definitively how much delivery there is. Local authorities, which are not delivering, are able to hide behind the figures and claim there is no demand for Traveller-specific accommodation, when the Traveller representative bodies are stating there is such demand. That was something we were anxious to address by ensuring we have robust data.

Turning to the comments on the diminution of powers of elected members of local authorities, I share the Senator's view that the powers of those elected members should not be diminished any further. In this case, however, we feel that the situation with Traveller accommodation is at an emergency level now. I know many sections of the community face strong pressures in gaining access to housing, particularly people facing affordability challenges. Travellers, though, face all those pressures too, being a population which generally has a low income, as well as the added pressures deriving from discrimination regarding access to properties. There are also practical pressures, given that the average size of a Traveller household is three times the size of a settled household. Trying to get accommodation for a family with a large number of children in the Dublin area is impossible with HAP because the properties are simply not on the market. Given all of that, we believe there is an argument for suspending some of the functions of councillors on an emergency and short-term basis.

On the comments concerning the quality of work being done in TAPs and their implementation, I again share the Senator's view that in many cases, good work is being done. I acknowledge that. This is a challenging area and one in which it is far from easy to work. If these issues were easy, they would have been resolved by now. Our analysis indicates that quality varies around the country. Some local authorities have very good Traveller accommodation consultative committees that are working very well and have good relationships with the Traveller representatives on the committee. In other areas, however, they are effectively non-functional and the quality of the Traveller accommodation programmes varies nationally.

The key issue, however, is the implementation of those programmes. The process is that a local authority publishes a Traveller accommodation programme, which is then sent to the Department and the Department allocates money based on the programme. The local authorities, therefore, make the request for the money. In the relevant table in the report, it will be seen that there is major variation in the level of drawdown. The problem, in particular, is that the drawdown is weak in local authority areas where the Traveller population is rising. Some of those areas identified in the report are Dublin city, Cork city and county and Longford. We examined in some depth why drawdown was not happening and Dr. Norton can speak further on Part 8. One concern we had, however, was that all of the effort put into devising the plans was not then matched by their translation into development plans. Senator Boyhan mentioned the example of Dún Laoghaire, but it is not the case in every local authority that sites are identified in development plans. There is often a disconnect and that is a problem.