Ms Maria Joyce:

I wish to echo the points made earlier around congratulations. It is fantastic in one way to be sitting here with a Traveller chairing this committee. It is historic and the more it happens across other committees, the better. Well done, Chairman, you are playing a blinder.

It is unfortunate that we are before this committee again saying exactly the same things we have been saying for decades. Implementation and action are needed. As has already been said, it was not today or yesterday when we learned of these issues or became aware of them. For too long the State has known its failure in the context of Travellers and accommodation.

I am pleased the issue of the burden of racism was raised because the inaction and lack of implementation are underpinned by institutional racism. This problem has utterly failed Travellers living in inhumane conditions.

The report of the Ombudsman for Children is damning. It sets out starkly the conditions in which Traveller children and their parents are living in this country. However, it is not the first report on Spring Lane. In January 2019, a Council of Europe committee upheld a collective complaint about Spring Lane that outlined the conditions that the families, including children, are living in there. That was two and a half years ago. Absolutely nothing has happened in the interim apart from conditions getting worse. Unfortunately, as has already been said, this is the experience of thousands of Travellers living in other substandard and appalling conditions in Traveller-specific accommodation.

We need to remind ourselves that poor and substandard accommodation has a major impact on all aspects of our lives, including health and education. We are already looking at acute disadvantage in education for Traveller children and they experience inequality in terms of access, participation and outcomes. Accommodation has a major bearing on this, as is clear from the testimony of children in the report of the ombudsman. The children are on the back foot from the get-go in walking out to school from where they live covered in mud. The impact on children is similar across the board. It is right that noise is being made. It is right that there is criticism of the conditions and what people have to live with in Spring Lane. What is more important is the action that is needed to follow through from that. Unfortunately, we have not seen that despite the same kinds of issues being flagged time and again. Let us hope for the families in Spring Lane and the thousands of Travellers living in these conditions elsewhere not only that noise is made but that it has an impact on the lived lives of people and Travellers living in these conditions throughout the country.

All this means there has to be action by the State. It has already been spoken about but Part 8 needs to be suspended. It is a significant barrier. We are already seeing it in courts at the moment in respect of one area in the country. The problem is the threat of the mechanism, how it is used and the way in which elected officials act. They are part of local authority accommodation consultative committees and are supposedly working in partnership with Travellers throughout the country to address accommodation issues. On the one hand we say let the plan for the Traveller accommodation programme go through but on the other hand we know it will not get past Part 8. That is no way for what is supposed to be a partnership approach to work. There is abject failure by local authorities with regard to Traveller accommodation.

The removal of trespass legislation from the Statute Book is essential given the impact it has had on Traveller nomadism. In conjunction with that we need an absolute moratorium on convictions in the context of Traveller needs. That can only happen if the State takes the current situation as it is in the context of decades of failure in addressing Traveller accommodation. We should not be sitting before this committee again and, unfortunately, it is frustrating to think that we probably will be sitting before the committee again naming the same issues we have named many times because the State and local authorities have failed to act in a way that will deliver for Travellers with regard to accommodation.