Ms Sin?ad Carr:

I agree with the Chair's concerns in that there are some sites where a lot of work is required. It is not just about accommodation; that is the message that needs to come through. If we are looking at those sites, we need to take a holistic approach. Every agency needs to be engaging actively on site and then stepping up and addressing needs because there are very vulnerable families in some of those sites, who have no hand, act or part in what is going on and it is causing them a lot of distress. We see that is something we need to do. It is not easy, but it can only be dealt with by focusing on the issues and having particular task groups with respect to each one.

The education issue has been raised with us by the Traveller community. We are also aware, in the context of accommodation, that we are dealing with the same families and the same inherent issues. To be fair, most children will go to primary school and will get on, but once they leave primary school, they drop off very significantly. We pulled together all the key stakeholders involved in education, including NGOs, secondary schools, primary schools, preschools and the communities themselves. To be fair, a very safe space was created to say there was no blame here and to ask what issues the individuals are facing as a sector and a community.

We then looked at working out what we could do together to address that. We have an action plan together focused on the Cashel educational catchment area where there is a secondary school, two primary schools and preschools. Members of the community itself, our own staff, and NGO staff are now working with the families. We are working towards getting more children into the preschools and actively targeting those. We have put a homework facility in place that will be commencing in September; we are only just getting off the ground. This was funding through the Dormant Accounts Fund but Tipperary County Council has also agreed to continue to fund it for at least five years to track progress over a period. There is the volunteer centre run by Youth Work Ireland and the NGOs which, hopefully, will be working alongside those from the Traveller community to support the homework of those kids. This is so that when they come in from school they can get their homework done and can go into school the next day.

I also acknowledge the Technological University of the Shannon Thurles Campus, TUS, and Mary Immaculate College in Thurles, that have agreed to work with us and track the progress over the next five years to ensure that when there are children coming in, they are able to get into a secondary school where they have appropriate literacy and numeracy skills relevant to their age group and are not in a position where they struggle. The intention over time is to help them through that process, to focus on that, and to see how it works. I say again that this is being done collaboratively. It is being done with existing resources and in people's own time. This includes my own staff's time which is for accommodation but they are being pulled into this space to manage it. I hope that if we can come through with a profile over five years and demonstrate from an evidence perspective that this will only work through a collaborative process, that then we will start making any changes.

The last thing I will say is that providing accommodation on its own is not solving the problem. There needs to be far more done with some of these particularly marginalised and vulnerable families and groups. That is really the only way we are going to start progressing. I keep saying to people who talk to me that we have 375 Traveller families in the county. Approximately 40 of them are vulnerable and complex but the vast majority of the families get on with their lives. They feed their kids, send them out to school, and do the best they possibly can for them. It is those 40 families we need to be looking at.