Ms Jacinta Brack:

I thank the Deputy. Currently, the five-year Traveller accommodation programmes are under review. We do not have a report yet. I think the report is with the Department as of last December so we do not have insight yet as to the targets delivered through those programmes. The next programme is under way. What we do know, and I suppose some of this ties into Deputy Buckley's question, is that because we do not have a centralised plan for Travellers despite the Act being in place for 25 years there is no central oversight within the Department of housing with regard to national planning, budgeting, future growth, pipeline reports and planning, targets delivered, and progression on Traveller accommodation programmes, TAPS.

I refer to all of this in the context of a centralised, coherent view of what is happening around the country for Traveller accommodation. This has allowed this kind of rot, as it were, to continue to exist year after year, indefinitely, for 25 years. Much of the time, despite the very good efforts of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage with regard to oversight at the level of budgetary management, and a lot more besides, there is not a strategy. There is no strategic approach around Traveller accommodation nationally. Much of the time, as well, when we are looking to see what the situation is concerning fulfilment and other things, we have to set down these questions as parliamentary questions. This is the case sometimes even concerning trying to find out the population of the community and where Travellers are living. We must wait a year, because there is a lapse of the year from when the count is done. For example, we are getting the annual count of Traveller families now, but this count was undertaken in November 2022. There is not, therefore, a co-ordinated approach.

Having had parliamentary questions on our behalf in this regard, what we do know, and can see for the first time ever since the Act, having looked at the number of units planned for Travellers from 2016 to 2023, is there were only 892 such units. Of that total number of units planned nationwide across the local authorities, only 93 new units of Traveller-specific accommodation were planned. From 2019 to 2022, we know that only 44 units of Traveller-specific accommodation were delivered nationally. This is a major problem.

It is a particular problem given that the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, under the Housing for All strategy, sets a target every year. Such a target has definitely been set in the last three years, and the national budgets as well, around social housing delivery. Looking at this information, it is possible to calculate a pro ratanumber of units delivered by comparing the rate of Traveller accommodation supplied via local authority new builds in the period from 2019 to 2022. In 2021, 1,998 units were delivered. In the three-year period, almost 10,000 units of social housing accommodation were built throughout all the local authority areas, while, for the same period, only 44 units were built for Travellers.

There is, therefore, definitely a lack of ambition. There is a lack of ambition at local level. There is also a lack of delivery, a lack of oversight, a lack of monitoring and structural problems. These impediments range across everything, from the LTACCs, as the Deputy mentioned, to the planning structures. Part 8 is also a problem. With regard to the moratorium in this regard to Part 8 to accelerate social housing delivery, introduced by the Minister last January, we have been unable to find one single council that has used this Part 8 exemption to deliver on Traveller accommodation. We would be very keen for this committee to have a future view of this aspect or how it might be assessed. No targeted approach was addressed by the Minister at the time in the circular communicated to local authorities on Traveller-specific accommodation within this context, but we would assume that the local authorities themselves would want to accelerate Traveller accommodation even in mixed housing developments. We cannot see where this has happened.

The overall lack of a co-ordinated approach for Traveller accommodation has been evident since the report of the expert group. This was published and endorsed by the Department and the former Minister of State at the time, Deputy Damien English, and very clearly set out a plan with regard to governance, oversight, delivery and redressing some of the issues in this regard. As Mr. Joyce mentioned, at the centre of this was the development of a national Traveller accommodation authority. In the four years since that report was published, this has not come to pass, despite the good efforts of the national Traveller representatives who sit on the programme board appointed by the Minister. There is a stalemate as such.

Yet in that time, since 2019, the Housing Options for Our Ageing Population policy, with 44 strategic actions, was established, as was the national homeless action plan, which saw a committee established with a cross-departmental approach, in partnership with other Government Departments. There is no cross-government approach with regard to Traveller accommodation. The first youth homeless strategy was also developed in this time, with a national oversight committee. The national housing strategy for disabled people was launched. Additionally, there is the Housing Agency's own strategy, which has a remit around refugees and disabled people. It is also notable that an Irish Travellers accommodation strategy was developed in Northern Ireland.

What we are referring to here is that, yet again, Travellers have been left behind. Specifically, there has never been a strategic approach to the development and delivery of Traveller accommodation. There is no implementation plan at a national level and, as I said, no specific strategy, despite such strategies having been developed for other groups in that time.