Dr. Conor Cashman:

With regard to the fact the recommendations are very close to the recommendations in the action plan, the survey was carried out towards the end of last year and we were drafting and analysing the data and talking to people about the recommendations or findings from the research. When the action plan and the policy were launched, we felt it was an important opportunity to see what overlaps there were in terms of what the voices of islanders are saying and how this might map with the action plan. A specific point from the survey and the recommendations is that there needs to be a specific island-based action plan and metrics that might sit under the action plan or policy from Government. As has been demonstrated, there is a unique set of challenges around housing on Ireland's offshore islands but there are different experiences in different areas, to which people can speak. For example, dereliction is probably not a huge issue on some of the Galway islands but, from the report, rent precarity seems to be very high in the Galway island regions, more so than in others. What we do in the final published report is that we have an information sheet that sets out the different kinds of experiences that emerged across the four different regions. That is all anonymous information, of course, but it gives a sense of it.

The action plan that Dr. Siobhán O’Sullivan and I have set out focuses on community-engaged responses and people being listened to, so the action plan is just not some nice PDF that sits on the shelf and people will actually enact these things, particularly local groups.