Ms Roslyn Molloy:

There is the planning and then there is the national body question. Were a national body to be building and developing Traveller-specific accommodation, there is a concern, as Mr. Allen has said, that we would almost be another step removed. This was one of the findings. One of the report's recommendations is to establish a national authority and to extend the remit of the national Traveller accommodation consultative committee. At the moment it is an advisory body and a lot of the work that we have done in the Housing Agency has come through from that advisory body as recommendations to the Minister to carry out research in particular areas. It was the view that there needed to be greater monitoring. The review commissioned by the Housing Agency on the Traveller accommodation programme, TAP, pointed out the need to look at who was following up when the Traveller accommodation programmes in local authorities were not achieving and meeting their targets. Who is taking on the oversight to do this? The review found there needed to be independent monitoring of all of that aspect. This is one of the recommendations that has gone to the programme implementation board. When it comes to some of the information, we can definitely see why that would be the case. A body that is building and developing Traveller-specific accommodation might be a moving away. As Mr. O'Connor said, there was an issue with the planning whereby things were not aligned. The Traveller accommodation programmes are not aligned with the local development plans, for example. They should all be running on the same cycle. Similarly, rather than taking Travellers and creating yet another distance, their housing needs should be aligned and matched with all of the other processes and administrative procedures and be structured within local and regional development and the regional assemblies. That was another area of planning that was suggested to be looked at.