Ms Jacinta Brack:

I will reply to the first question on the legislation. It is not really in our gift to answer that. We have used the phrase "Traveller accommodation authority" and that is what the expert group used as well. How it might look and be constructed and developed is something that is due to take consultation from the programme board, and Mr. Joyce is a member of that board.

I will give the Chair some precedents in other areas. We were looking for a separate entity, and that was envisaged by the expert group. It was akin to what the Housing Agency is so that Traveller accommodation might be established as a unit within the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. It would be staffed and come under the Housing Agency which, as the Chair knows, had formerly been under the Department as well. That independent authority, which was formerly the social housing body structures as well, came under that. There is also the model of the national directorate of Housing First that was based at the Housing Agency and, I think, is still based there at the moment. It is not that it had to be a complicated development and establishment of an actual authority. It is that there would be a coherent group of people resourced under the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, in whatever guise that takes with regard to staffing up, and that it would have central oversight of Traveller accommodation. The term for that was a "national Traveller accommodation authority". With regard to legislation, obviously that is a separate question around the accountability for local democracy. I assume that would be a much more challenging prospect into the future.