Ms Caroline Timmons:

I will start with Deputy Stanton's questions, and the AHB question, which I think is the first question the Deputy asked. Why have AHBs not made use of funding? There is only one AHB involved in this particular area and that is probably part of the issue. Most of the big AHBs are very much involved in social housing proper, as well as on the affordable and cost rental sides at this stage. The development of an AHB that has the skills and knowledge to take forward that capital funding piece is probably an area we need to keep working on. It was one of the recommendations and something that we need to keep taking forward. It is something the Department is conscious of as well. If any of my colleagues want to comment on any of this, they will be free to do so but maybe I will give some brief answers on Deputy Stanton's other questions and we can come back to anything he is looking to get more on.

The second question was on the national Traveller accommodation authority. This is a matter that the programme board has on its agenda. As I have mentioned, Mr. Niall Crowley has come in as the new chair of the board, and that is on the agenda for his first meeting in a couple of weeks' time. The date is not set but the first meeting of the NTACC, which he is also chairing, is next Friday week. The follow-up will be the programme board. They are due to discuss that. There have been a number of pieces of work done on that during the previous chair's time, and the programme board will be due to discuss that and will try to take it forward. I know from discussions with Mr. Crowley that he is also keen that we move forward with work on the local Traveller accommodation consultative committees, LTACCs. He really believes that we need to strengthen those structures at the local level. It is another area that is associated with the type of work that we need to and that Mr. Crowley is keen to move on. In the next report, the programme board might give us more of an update as to how it is progressing with that.

I will leave it to Ms Farrelly to address the homework supports. It is obviously an important area. Deputy Stanton then asked about the elected members making those decisions. It is a consistent cultural issue that we need to address over time, and addressing it is possibly beyond one Department. It is a broader issue and probably something that this committee can usefully consider as part of its work. We are very conscious of it. There are certain emergency powers there and there are also new powers that some of the local authorities are using. We have seen examples recently. Ardrew in Kildare is a group housing scheme that is using section 179A of the Planning and Development Act 2000. One can see some developments in that area but bypassing really should not be the issue. It should be the elected members coming forward with agreement. That is where we would like to see that space moving to, so fostering that communication and collaboration would be preferable in our view. That would work better on the ground.

On the Traveller identifier, this maybe connects back to one of Deputy Ó Cuív's questions on what we know about the preferences of people electing to ask for specific types of accommodation. One of the things that was done as part of the recommendations was to put in that Traveller ethnic identifier piece. I will give some of the statistics that have come out of that but I will put a health warning on it. It came in in March 2022. We have only done one summary of social housing assessments since, in November 2022. It is really only a small snapshot, and I would not take it as giving enough data yet to make any decisions on.

I will give some of the statistics that came out of it, just out of interest. Obviously, there would have been over 50,000 on the summary of social housing assessments, SSHA but only 124 Traveller households identified themselves as being Travellers and seeking Traveller accommodation.

Of the 124, 96 said they were seeking mainstream housing - the overwhelming majority - four said they were looking for halting site or caravan bay accommodation, four said they were looking for group housing and 16 had no preference. While this information is interesting, I am not sure it is enough to tell us anything just yet. On the question as to why they were electing to make those preferences, the data do not tell us that. The Deputy rightly identified that we could collect the data – they are useful to have – but that exploring the data and the reasons behind them is another matter. Are the data that way because we are not providing high-quality Traveller-specific accommodation and people believe they will get normal accommodation at social housing rates more quickly or do they genuinely have that preference? Exploring this issue further once we have more data is something we would be interested in doing, but at least we have the data now – that is a major improvement on where we were – and we will keep an eye on them as the trends move forward over the next number of SSHAs.

Regarding an update on transient sites, we are working with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, NIHE, on this matter. The team meets regularly. Mr. O’Sullivan and Ms Murphy are involved in that work, as is the Housing Agency. With the NIHE, we are jointly funding and trying to advance research in that respect. I believe it is at tender phase. We need to understand the demand for transient sites. We are told that there is no particular demand in Dublin, but where is the demand, how much will it cost, how much will we need to invest and what are its benefits? That research is moving forward and we are delighted with the co-operation we are receiving from the NIHE.

Does the Cathaoirleach want me to allow my colleague to contribute now or shall I proceed to Deputy Ó Cuív’s questions?