Dr. Niall Muldoon:

I am not an expert on the planning laws and various elements of it. When Deputy Joan Collins asked whether section 24 of the 2002 Act should be repealed, I cannot comment. I am afraid I would not know enough about it. I am aware of the Part 8 provision through the 2019 review. I listen to the people and experts who know. A review group was put in place by a group of experts. It was accepted by the then Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy English. It involved the NGOs and advocacy groups and they support the concept of suspending the Part 8 provision. I can see the benefit of that, for a period of time.

That concept of political influence is part of local authority, but we have seen the impact in terms of blocking up and stunting the growth of many generations of Travellers, not just over five or six years. There are three generations living on the site we investigated. Again, 11 families came to us and they all want to be moved into social housing. If they were given the opportunity to move, one would change out one third of the total number of people nearly immediately.

There is an opportunity to be taken here. I will not suggest exactly what could happen but there is an expert review report in place which is only two years old and has been supported by all the advocate groups and NGOs. With regard to national Traveller accommodation authority, the Deputy called this a milestone report. I would hope this is a milestone report but in order for it to be so, we probably need to give a year for the local authorities to start showing they might change or do things differently, the Government to back them, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to come in stronger and challenge anybody who underspends and the system to be done differently.

If that is not working after 12 months, perhaps there is an opportunity for a new authority to be considered, that is, an independent authority which creates a focus on the children of the Traveller communities. If we get it right for the children, everything else will follow. That is the mantra we go with all the time.

We have to look at Covid-19. In the past 14 or 15 months, the Government has acted with great wisdom in many cases, in brushing aside much bureaucracy which was not needed. Can we do that in this situation? The last set of witnesses before the committee two weeks ago talked about 2,000 families living in severe, dangerous situations. Perhaps we can find a route to solving their problems, over the next four to five years, through adjusting things such as suspending some parts of the Act, giving more power to the CEOs or whatever way it needs to be done. I am not quite sure exactly how it will pan out. However, if the political will is there to do that, as there has been through Covid-19, to move things forward and emphasise the importance of the individual and families, there is a great opportunity here. I hope this will be a milestone for all local authorities.

I will let Ms Ward answer on the meeting of the local authorities and what we are hoping from that point of view.