Ms Rosemary Hennigan:

Focus Ireland welcomes this opportunity to present to the committee. Focus Ireland has been a leading national NGO working with homeless families for more than 30 years, and, in the course of our work supporting those experiencing homelessness, we regularly work with households from the Traveller community, who are disproportionately represented in homeless services.

While homelessness is an incredibly difficult experience for anyone, there is no doubt that being from the Traveller community makes the experience of homelessness more challenging again. Focus Ireland caseworkers report that there is greater complexity of need when a household is from the Traveller community, reflecting the broad and multilayered pattern of social exclusion in society. There is a sizable gap between Travellers' housing and cultural needs and the availability of appropriate accommodation for this group, and this gap has been there for many years. While many of the problems we see through our front-line casework are also experienced by households not from the Traveller community, the multiple layers of marginalisation Traveller households face place them at particular risk, first, of an experience of homelessness; and second, difficulties accessing homeless services and later exiting homelessness.

In particular, we highlight a number of issues to committee members, the first of which is the absence of data specifically recording the housing challenges facing Traveller households. Traveller organisations have, over the years, called for an ethnic identifier to be used, which would allow us to better understand the causes of homelessness for Traveller households, as well as their experience within homeless services. We know that Traveller households are over-represented in homelessness but we do not know, month to month, how many people recorded as homeless in the monthly figures published by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage are from the Traveller community. We also, currently, have no means of measuring the extent of hidden homelessness in Ireland, including the number of people couch-surfing, in overcrowded accommodation, or experiencing housing scarcity of one form or another. The Summary of Social Housing Assessments 2020, published by the Housing Agency, shows that 1,104 Travellers on the housing list registered a specific accommodation need, but we do not know how many Travellers on the general social housing list did not register a specific accommodation need, or how many people have a housing need but are not currently on the housing list. The expert review group report on Traveller accommodation, published in July 2019, included a call for a nationwide survey of the housing needs of the Traveller population to fully understand mobility patterns, family formation, existing accommodation tenure and conditions, and future accommodation preferences. We hope that this research will be undertaken urgently.

The second issue relates to problems with the private rental sector as the primary exit mechanism from homelessness for this group. The vast majority of exits from homelessness currently are into the private rental sector, rather than to local authority or approved housing body, AHB, social housing. Figures relating to quarter 1 of 2021 show that 82% of exits from homelessness were via the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme. While HAP has prevented many people entering homelessness, as well as allowing thousands of households to exit emergency accommodation into the private rental sector, these tenancies are not a substitute for permanent, stable social housing. It is particularly challenging for marginalised households with complex needs to find and maintain HAP tenancies in the absence of supports and interventions. It is also a challenge to find rental units suitable for single adults or larger households, with many of these households becoming trapped in emergency accommodation for long periods as a result. The private rental sector can be a hostile place for marginalised groups, or households with high needs, who are competing with the general population for limited rental stock, facing potential evictions, rising rents, and discrimination. A report from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, published in 2018, found Travellers to be 22 times more likely than any other group to be discriminated against in the private rental sector. If a HAP tenancy cannot be sourced, Traveller households can become trapped in emergency accommodation or left with no option but to return to overcrowded, substandard accommodation with family or in unserviced and sometimes uninhabitable sites.

The third issue is the need to match social housing stock to family size. Acquisitions and leasing of existing units for social housing tend to be two- or three-bed units, as far more of this unit type are currently available on the property market. Local authorities report that accommodation for single adults and larger families is more difficult to source in existing stock; it is therefore hugely important that new build social housing matches the needs of those on the housing list.

Data from census 2016 show that Traveller households tend to be bigger than the general population, with more than one in four Irish Traveller households having six or more persons compared with less than one in 20 households in the State overall. One of the main pathways into homelessness reported to Focus Ireland is overcrowding in accommodation or an untenable situation where a household was living in an unserviced site and cannot remain there on health and safety grounds. This is reflected in available data, which show that Traveller households are much more likely to experience overcrowding. Nearly 39% of Traveller households had more persons than rooms compared with less than 6% of all households in the general population. The under-provision of Traveller-specific accommodation exacerbates such situations, as does the continuing prevalence of unaffordable rents and the lack of available or appropriate social housing. While Traveller-specific accommodation must be progressed urgently by local authorities, Focus Ireland also believes that new build general social housing should be provided to match the family size of those larger households on the housing list.

The fourth issue is the framing of legislation and policy to facilitate cultural identity. The legislative framework for access to housing and homelessness is based on a geographic link to a particular local authority. Eligibility for social housing is based on a connection to the local authority area and each local authority holds a distinct housing list. Once a person is added to a housing list with a particular local authority, it can be difficult to transfer to another. If a household becomes homeless and has an urgent accommodation need in a local authority area where a local connection cannot be demonstrated, the household may be refused emergency accommodation. If a household needs to move area for any reason, it may struggle to transfer to another local authority housing list and it risks losing its place on the original housing list. The fact that homelessness and housing is devolved to local authorities can lead to gaps and blockages in accessing services, differing income limits in different local authority areas, differing HAP rates and other problems. This is an experience common to all households facing homelessness, but the effect can produce particular hardships for the Traveller community, due to the distinct cultural identity and nomadic tradition of this community. A rights-based approach would allow for greater flexibility on geographic placement and transfers between housing lists.

The fifth and final issue is the need for additional supports to assist Traveller households to find appropriate accommodation. In the experience of Focus Ireland caseworkers, Traveller households presenting as homeless tend to have more complex needs, more complicated cases, and a higher support need when in emergency accommodation. The lower school completion rate among Traveller households means that literacy can be an issue, affecting people's ability to engage with the complicated nature of applying for social housing or sourcing a HAP tenancy. This can be hugely distressing and frustrating for people attempting to navigate a bureaucratic system such as the housing list and homeless accommodation. Additional time and support are needed to ensure that those barriers are overcome; however, such support is often not available.

Again, this reflects the ongoing structural disadvantages which the Traveller community face and which need to be proactively addressed. Consideration should be given to greater supports in the form of additional case management at local authority level aimed at helping Traveller households to access their rights and, ultimately, to find homes.

Focus Ireland believes that housing and homeless policy must take account of the particular demographics and characteristics of vulnerable and minority groups, including the Traveller community. Our housing system must be designed to allow sufficient flexibility to accommodate and respect the rights and requirements of minority groups and their distinct identities. Laws, policies, circulars, rules and schemes can be indirectly discriminatory if they fail to consider and properly address the disparate impacts which a particular law or requirement has on a minority group. All public sector agencies are required under the public sector duty to consider the human rights and equality impacts on statutorily protected groups, which includes the Traveller community. In the area of housing and homelessness, Focus Ireland would welcome greater engagement from statutory agencies and public bodies with the public sector duty. We would also welcome a rights-based and culturally-sensitive approach to the assessment and allocation of housing and housing supports for Traveller households.

We very much welcome the committee’s invitation to meet today and are happy to take any questions the members may have.