Mr. Brian Dillon:

I thank Ms Casey and the Vice Chairman. Following on from what Ms Casey said, the core message we are bringing to the table is that any kind of forward solution to Traveller accommodation, which has been acknowledged as failing in so many respects to date, must be one that has the Traveller community itself at the heart of that response.

I do not propose to spend any of the limited time we have explaining to the committee what Cena is or what we do. We circulated a summary map for members if they would like to know where and how we are involved and our level of activity.

It is more important in the couple of minutes that we have now to let the committee know the main lessons that are emerging for us as Cena and to give our analysis of where we think this fits in future policy direction or decisions that need to be made urgently around this.

There are a number of different principles, which we have circulated in a summary paper. The committee will notice when reading this short document that very few of the points we are making have to do with bricks and mortar or building a particular style of house. I will go through these quickly but these principles are more around community and family ownership, which is at the centre of everything we do. We have workers with us who are trained members of the Traveller community working with people in their own community to begin a discussion about need. Our most important starting principle is assessing the need for Traveller-appropriate accommodation. Our own experience is that this has not been done. It may have been done on paper or in terms of meeting particular criteria to produce reports and strategic plans but it has not been done to the extent or the space that Travellers themselves need to determine not just what their needs are to get out of a crisis situation by next week, but what these needs are for their children, their future generations, and so forth.

That is the project that we have been engaged with in Cena. We have had Travellers speaking to Travellers about what the solutions are in the longer term. An essential part of that discussion has been referred to and is referred to in the title of this committee meeting, which is Traveller-appropriate or culturally appropriate accommodation.

It is our firm belief that this has never been defined. People have put opinions and interpretations forward but the engagement that we have had to date with the Traveller community has begun to define what Traveller-appropriate actually means. Involving Travellers in that discussion has made a significant difference because any kind of effort in the past to interpret what we as settled people might think what that means have utterly failed. Not only have they failed to provide accommodation but they have led to the disastrous results which Ms Casey has referred to which cut right across mental health, relationships between the settled community and the Traveller community and to the heart of the division and discrimination that happens.

Our firm belief then is that the starting point is that Travellers begin to define this.

We believe Travellers are only now beginning to define it. We are working with the best architects, people in that profession who we think may be listening for the first time. We are working with surveyors who are beginning to imagine and believe there are actually solutions to these issues as soon as Travellers are put in control of those solutions, but not only in defining them. The building of the homes, in our experience to date, is the very easy part of the job we do. The more difficult and challenging part is to create ownership around those homes, to create a representative voice for Travellers in those homes and our own tenants and to be able to make sure that a future-proofing takes place.

A serious failure of past policy has been to ignore future implications. We work with families to look at when new family formation is likely to happen and we begin to renegotiate accommodation needs as soon as that happens. We view that as essential to long-term sustainability.

Members will see in the document we wrote that we put a strong emphasis on working across communities. We use the term "community relations". It means we put as much effort into working with settled communities as we do with the Travelling community. This is based firmly on building mutual respect and an informed understanding of the benefits of diversity. We have our own people who are all members of the Traveller community trained to deliver that.

I will finish by pointing to a couple of the policy implications that have been important in our experience to date and we think will be important going forward. The expert review group report on Traveller accommodation was very clear - and it was in agreement with some of the points Ms Casey made - that we are looking at abject failure across the board as a starting point and that we have a legacy of failure and neglect. Most important, the report points to the need for another approach that actually involves Travellers in arriving at the solution.

Cena is the only Traveller housing body to work across other agencies. The point was made that approved housing bodies, sometimes with the best will in the world, feel unable and perhaps not knowledgeable enough to take on or deal adequately with Traveller issues. We are beginning to do that now. The Department has just approved a programme for us in order that we can bring on staff and work across the other approved housing bodies and across local authorities. I do not want to offer any kind of simplified solution or give the impression that we do not think there are a number of very serious and complex issues here. We say very firmly to the committee, however, that the approach we have taken has proved itself to us and should go forward in policy terms as there are solutions to this. These problems can be addressed. There is a model we have developed that can work. Rather than any kind of long-term elaborate policy discussion or any other set of aspirations that may not actually come into practice, we think we should start implementing this model and addressing this problem. Cena is committed to doing that.

We are also committed to working with any other organisation. The Simon Communities will make a presentation following ours. We have already engaged with them on this. We know that co-operation across agencies is essential but that it has to be done as a Traveller-centred model. That is our one big message we would like people to take away from our presentation. I know I have not given a lot of detail on what we do or how we do it but we are open to answer any questions members may have on that.