Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 12 October 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Traveller Accommodation: Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage

Photo of Mary FitzpatrickMary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and his officials for attending today. I acknowledge the presence of Deputy Ó Cuív, who is Vice Chairman of the Joint Committee on Key Issues Affecting the Traveller Community. I also acknowledge and thank the stakeholders who have engaged with the Minister of State’s Department on issues affecting Traveller accommodation. We have discussed this issue in private meetings of this committee, so I am delighted that we can have this joint meeting of the two committees today with the Minister of State and his officials. The Minister of State’s statement acknowledged that there have been decades of under provision and that he and his officials, to their credit, are energetically trying to reverse and address that issue. I commend him for that.

In his statement, the Minister of State also acknowledged that responsibility lies with the local authorities. All local authorities have not performed equally. Certainly, some local authorities have significantly underperformed. While the board and the expert group have a remit to look at the legislation and its impact, I am concerned that there remains a lack of real-time monitoring and evaluation of the performance of the local authorities in this area. Will the Minister of State advise us regarding what actions he thinks can be taken, perhaps as part of the mid-term review, to improve the oversight and accountability in respect of each of the local authorities? The last tranche of funding allocated to the local authorities was used, but that funding was significantly reduced from what had been budgeted in this area in previous years.

I also ask the Minister of State to advise us if he intends to give an instruction to local authorities to take a specific action when developing their county development plans to identify sites for Traveller accommodation. I refer specifically to transient sites. It is important and I am wondering if he is considering taking that action. Turning to the caravan loans scheme, I welcome the Minister of State indicating that he is considering extending the scheme. When does he anticipate making that decision and to what extent does he see the scheme being extended?

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