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

I want to respond in a constructive way to comments other committee members made. It is important to tease out this stuff but it is also important to acknowledge the Minister and his staff are paying close attention to this committee because implementing this report will be tricky and the Minister will not put himself out on a limb if he does not think he will get support for these measures. Much of our conversation has been about the Part 8 process, section 183 land disposals and the role of the regulator. I am one of the minority Deputies who vigorously opposed the strategic housing development legislation for all the reasons we are discussing here in terms of not wanting powers to be centralised but we must acknowledge a number of basic facts. Page 50 of the report refers to a 35% underspend in Traveller accommodation over the lifetime of projects. What those figures hide is that in recent years the underspend has worsened. There was a 48% underspend last year and that was higher than the underspend the previous year at a time there were finally some increases in budgets for local authorities.

In recent years some local authorities have not spent anything on this. Last year, ten local authorities did not spend a cent on Traveller accommodation, upgrades or new accommodation. A total of 14 substantially underspent their budgets. If we want to send a signal to the Minister that we want to work with him to fix that problem, we will have to take some uncomfortable decisions. I say this with the greatest of respect to Deputies Pat Casey and Darragh O'Brien and Senator Victor Boyhan because I am grappling with the same difficulties and we share views on this. If we do not do something on section 183, Part 8 and the regulator, nothing will change. With respect to the issue of how many Part 8 proposals have been refused, generally our difficulty is we do not even get to the Part 8 process.

We have a Traveller accommodation plan. It is approved by local authorities with statutory responsibilities. In some instances, councillors are responding to pressure from settled constituents. In others, managers do not want to progress the project. There is often collusion between those two elements and the project never gets to a Part 8 application. Large numbers of people in the settled community do not want Traveller-specific accommodation beside them and will do everything that they can to convince elected representatives that if they support the projects, they will not be re-elected. The level of underspending is incredible. Last year and the year before, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government came to us to request additional expenditure for mainstream social housing because it was overspending. That is at a time when we are not spending nearly enough. I wish the Department would ask us to double its budget, which we would happily do.

We cannot say that we want to fix this chronic underspend and yet not at least find some way to do it. If members are uncomfortable with what is here, I accept that. I do not think this is straightforward. We have then to find some other way to do it. I started out not being in favour of taking Part 8 and section 183 powers away. I just cannot work out any other way to fix the problem that the data show. If the expert group tasked with dealing with this says that this is the best way to do it and I do not have an alternative, then I will defer to the wisdom of the people who are tasked to do this. The Minister of State, Deputy English, needs to hear from this committee that whatever he brings forward to tackle this, we will work with him to try to get it through. If we start to get political divisions, this will go nowhere, and we will be sitting here in another year or two with even more underspends.

Members will know that I am not prone to exaggerated language in this committee. A consequence of not fixing this is that people will die. Those of us who know the Traveller accommodation in our communities, who go to see the poor state of electricity connections and foul water sewage connections and who know what happened in Carrickmines have to be serious about this. One of the reasons that those things happened is that allocated budgets were unspent and too small. I appeal to members, if not necessarily to change their minds in the course of this meeting, either to support what is on the table or to come up with something else. We cannot leave the planning and land issues as they are. We can do the other good stuff, such as having ethnic identifiers, giving Traveller families the option of stating preferences, and having a much better evidence base. The crucial thing is to make sure that every single cent that is allocated is spent within the year that it is allocated to improve existing accommodation and to provide good quality new accommodation. This is too important for us to miss.

Senator Boyhan asked an important question. If we temporarily move section 183 and Part 8 powers to the chief executive, that does not address the issue that arises when the executive is reluctant to progress a project. How confident are the witnesses that the powers that they said the planning regulator has been given on foot of a communication from this new State-wide Traveller agency would be enough to force the manager to use those powers? I presume that the logic is that the manager is given these powers to implement the democratically agreed Traveller accommodation programme. If a manager chooses not to do it for whatever reason, this new State-wide Traveller agency can then say it is not acceptable and complain to the regulator. Do the witnesses think that mechanism will work? Will it be fast enough or do we need to think through something else?

I accept the point about choice-based letting. Local authorities with good practice on choice-based letting have a drop-in facility on Mondays and Fridays where people with literacy issues can go in and use choice-based letting. They have portals. Pretty much every elected representative in those constituencies provides that service to people with restricted literacy. As choice-based letting is rolled out for people who are not computer literate and have restricted letting, that should be made available in every local authority. It is a sticking point that caused difficulties at the start in some areas.