Ms RoseMarie Maughan:

I agree with both Ms Kelly and Ms Murtagh in all of the information that they have forwarded to members of the committee. The reality for us is that there has been a lack of accountability for decades. The only way that we are going to ensure that there is accountability for Traveller children in Ireland is to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes. We must ensure, as Traveller organisations, Senators, local councillors and Deputies, that we do not feed into the same system that has failed Travellers, generation after generation. I believe and feel that there is a change in the tide in that more people in Ireland and within the political system are saying that it is unacceptable. We need to be vocal. However, just being vocal is not good enough. We need to see action.

In this case, Traveller children need to see accountability. The only way they are going to have that accountability and are no longer going to have their human rights violated is to see the establishment of a national Traveller accommodation authority to oversee the implementation of the 32 recommendations of the expert group report. Funds for that must also be ring-fenced so that the group can set out to complete the task at hand. If it is not fully resourced, it will not be able to implement the 32 recommendations.

I wholeheartedly agree that local authorities that continue to fail to deliver Traveller accommodation plan after Traveller accommodation plan deserve to be sanctioned. They deserved to be sanctioned a long time ago because Travellers have been suffering the trauma of their failures. We need to end that. I and the Irish Traveller movement believe that there would be no need for sanctions if the national Traveller accommodation authority was in place and invested in sufficiently, because local authorities would be held to account and would implement their Traveller accommodation programmes. If there was a robust review system within the Traveller accommodation programmes, whereby there was a midterm review of each programme with timelines, targets and outputs, it would be easily monitored and the failure of local authorities would be caught in time. Traveller children need that level of accountability.

As Mr. Collins said, members of this committee and the representatives of Traveller organisations present here today are once more saying the same thing that we have been saying for 30 years. We need to be listened to, finally. We need other players to join us in our quest for equality. If every local Traveller organisation contacted the Ombudsman for Children's Office, there would be a similar result for each county in Ireland. That is a scandalous shame for a country of our status in 2021. We have to let Traveller children know that they matter.