Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their presentation. As previous speakers noted, it has taken a long time to get here and we appreciate how quickly the review group has acted in preparing its report. We thank it for that. A lot of this has probably been dealt with and we have spoken about many of these issues already. One of those issues is the collection of data and how important that is moving forward. Some of these are easy fixes in the sense that they could be done in a fairly straightforward manner, including that additional details such as those relating to the type of accommodation involved could be included on the housing application form. These are all basic and simple issues that could be fixed quite readily if the will is there to do so.

I will move to the more complicated and controversial matter of the local authority members themselves. Most people in this room do not want to remove powers from the local authority members. In fact, we want to give them more powers if possible. Failing to include local authority members in this process might have a worse effect in the long term when we try to integrate people into the communities or to deliver these projects at the end of the day. To develop that point, I sat on a local authority for 12 years and we had to take some tough decisions. Professor Norris mentioned objections from councillors and resident's associations. Sometimes I question how much energy, from the point of view of administration, is put into Traveller accommodation and into resolving the problem relating to it. Ultimately, the county council does not realistically get involved until something is put in front of it. I sometimes question whether the will is there at the management level. The report clearly indicates that the chief executive of a local authority has emergency powers to do this if he or she so desires. How many chief executives of local authorities across the country have used the emergency powers to help resolve the Traveller accommodation problem? How many part A planning processes for Traveller accommodation have members of local authorities voted down versus the percentage that have been voted through? Do we know the statistics for that? I am trying to be objective here. I do not like to see powers of local authority members being taken away. We need to look at other ways of trying to incentivise local authority members to be engaged in this process because they have a fundamental role in the integration of the Traveller accommodation problem at the end of the day. If we remove those powers from them, we could be creating another problem.

I want to move on to the planning process. Our guests referred to strategic housing developments, SHDs, and the board proposal. We had a huge debate here on the SHDs only a couple of weeks ago. A lot of us have a fundamental problem with the consultation process in the SHDs. This is not a Traveller accommodation issue, it is an issue with planning itself because at this stage a number of communities in my county would not have had their local area plan reviewed for 12 years and then the next minute the SHD process is forced on them without them having had any engagement on it. I have no problem with the principles of that process but I do have a difficulty with how we get there. I would be fully supportive of the need for county development plans and local development plans to be developed to a much higher level of detail. We need to clearly indicate what every piece of land will be used for and the type of design that will be used. A great deal more effort must be put into the consultation also. At that point and from there on I would not have a problem with the SHD process but that process involves more than Traveller accommodation. It has a broader remit. The SHD process has good points but one of the weaknesses was in the area of the consultation process. I would like to get some feedback on those issues.

Professor Norris stated that the majority of the money is being spent on renovations as opposed to being spent on new deliveries. We spent a good few years of delivering nothing, be it social houses or Traveller accommodation. Do we have a percentage for the amount of money that is spent on new deliveries as opposed to renovation works?

I have not read the full report, only bits of it. I have two charts in front of me: one on the spend and the other on the population. Is there a correlation between the allocation of money and the population of Travellers in each county or area?