Mr. Ger Deering:

As you can imagine with housing at the moment, it was a very broad-ranging discussion on the day and a lot of issues were raised. As we distilled things together, the area that we identified where we could probably make the best and quickest intervention that would have an impact is in respect of the housing assistance payment, HAP. One of the things we decided to do was to instigate an investigation that looks at how the Department and the shared service in Limerick and the local authorities are integrated and working together and at what improvements can be made in terms of HAP.

We had another issue, which shows the benefit of listening to people on the day. A circular from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage had become outdated and was causing a certain difficulty for NGOs, particularly for people who had come to this State in need of housing. We drew the issue with the circular to the attention of the Department and its officials updated their circular and issued a new one. That might seem like a very simple example but it is an important one, if issues are causing a problem. We also have, as a result of the workshop, decided to improve our outreach to the Traveller community and we are going to do some very targeted interventions in terms of working with Travellers. There were very definite actions that came out of the workshop. We have also kept in touch with the NGOs that attended the workshop and have informed them that we are taking these actions.