Mr. Paul Benson:

There are a couple of aspects to that. First, if I go back to 2008, €34 million was being spent by local authorities on Traveller-specific accommodation. That was at a time when a lot was happening in the construction industry. It fell away thereafter because of the recession. Nothing was being built and funding was tight. It has started to improve. As recently as 2017, there was as little as €4 million being spent on Traveller-specific accommodation, but that has grown in recent years to €6 million, €8 million and, last year, €14 million. We expect €15 million will be spent this year. There is evidence local authorities are building a pipeline of projects and that is feeding increased spend.

It is important to make the point that the underspend that is talked about relates to Traveller-specific accommodation in the budget, but that is only part of the funding the Department makes available for the accommodation of Travellers. They are accommodated under a range of accommodation options, including the housing assistance payment, the rental accommodation scheme, standard local authority accommodation or approved housing body accommodation. Our data on that are not as good as we would like but we are working on improving them.

Mr. Curran talked about the amount spent and the number of tenancies offered to people where casual vacancies arise in the stock. Where new social housing estates are built, Travellers are often accommodated in them. Most local authorities have minimum requirements in terms of how many they offer to Travellers in new estates and developments. All of that is not counted when the discussion being heard is about Traveller-specific accommodation. There is an array of work and spending going on in non-Traveller-specific accommodation that supports the Traveller population.