Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I appreciate the Senator's remarks. A key thing for me is this opportunity to change things from now on. That is why we wrote to the political leaders. The Senator is right that the local councillors are the ones who have to start stepping up but they have to be whipped, if one likes, as they would in the Dáil. There has to be a statement from the top that says that they need to vote in favour of Traveller accommodation for the next five years or whatever it might be until we get this problem sorted. We need to start stepping up and doing our duty which is legislated for - it is a statutory obligation in many cases. The Traveller review from 2019 suggests a pause on the section 8 element of the Act, and that maybe something we do for five years, but the key is start pushing from the top so there is no room for manoeuvre at local councillor level and they have to follow the rules which allow for Traveller accommodation. It will not solve everything completely but it will made a huge inroad to what is a relatively small number of people on the social housing list waiting to be moved on.

Like so many things, if one unblocks one element one starts to free up all the other areas. The transitory sites are only being filled up because there are not enough proper sites and there are not enough opportunities for social housing. As Ms Ward touched on, what I found shocking was the administration of social housing. We had 11 families, that is all. It took two and a half years to get the files together around social housing for those 11 families. The administration is very poor. If they were sorted out, clean, clear, we know one family was there 13 years and had not been moved on to social housing. These sorts of things would not happen in the general population. We need to ensure the proper administration is in place so that when there is an opportunity to move on a family it is taken and used. There are many lazy myths put out by local authorities and councillors that people have been offered X, Y and Z and are not taking it. In reality, when we investigated the 11 families, some who had been there over 13 years waiting, only eight offers were made. Two were taken up and the others were refused, appropriately, because they were in different areas or whatever. Eight offers in 13 years is not exactly moving fast or providing a way to unblock the dam. One can see how overcrowding would happen there.

I will pass over to Ms Ward to talk about the allocation to vulnerable children.