Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is anecdotal. It is very tough and we see this in all walks of life. We cannot just pick out one grouping when it happens in all walks of life. It would be great to get more training. Funnily enough, this is an issue we are looking at in the education committee in the context of the roll-out of the FUSE programme. That programme is about looking at areas of inclusion for children from all kind of backgrounds because we have a lot of different minority groups for many reasons, such as disabilities and so on, where children can be challenged. There is a wider perspective here when it comes to bias.

On housing, we have seen the largest budget ever, more than €3 billion, allocated to housing this year. The Department has looked at reducing homelessness targets. From my perspective, Galway County Council is the second-lowest funded council in the country and it is very important that we see resources allocated. The Minister has noted that project teams will be assigned to housing within local authorities so that will be a higher resource. The Minister also stated this year that the Department is looking to take more ownership of the allocation of Traveller housing by directly supporting local authorities in delivering that.

On the other areas Ms Fay mentioned, I note that Mr. Reilly mentioned the recommendations for which I thank him. Ms. Fay mentioned the noting of ethnicity, which is done through the census. I will highlight that the HSE has undergone an incredible year. It has been our front line against this pandemic and it has saved everyone's lives. I worked in National University of Ireland, NUI, Galway and I had the opportunity to work in health innovation in University Hospital Galway, UHG, and, as with anything, which is incredible, they triage based on need. That is how the health service works. It is those who are in most need of medical attention that get immediate attention. It is incredible that that is how it has to be triaged.

There has been a lack of beds, supports and everything else but there has been incredible investment this year in health alone. The community healthcare west organisation has a specific grouping looking at mental health within the CHO in that area. It has conducted workshops on inclusion and diversity that particularly looked at issues with a Traveller voice. Mr. Reilly spoke about "nothing for us without us" so it is very important that we are looking at having more of these workshops where we are speaking and ensuring that our voices, and Traveller voices, are heard.

On the ethnicity issue, again, that information is gathered through the census. On the HSE gathering data and having registers, there are so many areas for which we do not have registers. We do not have a register for diabetics or diabetes. We are talking here as if it is very simple matter but there are many things for which we do not have registers. It is probably a case of the HSE and the healthcare system not being as advanced as we would like them to be in terms of software, online or electronic medical health records. We saw all of these issues, and they are being looked at now, during the vaccine roll-out.

Now is the period in which there is an investment into the healthcare system and into looking at how we can bring an awful lot more of our systems in healthcare online and we would be able to gather more data in a better way and gather the information that is needed to form an evidence base for policy.

I welcome the information from Ms Kavanagh on GDPR. I was not aware of it. I was going to ask that question. She has caught me before I asked it. I have taken on board the two areas Mr. Reilly mentioned. With regard to the Traveller health report, I do not know if he wants to make any other comment on that, but I thank him for highlighting the recommendations and I take that on board.