Mr. John O'Sullivan:

In our area, maintenance comes up regularly at LTACC. We only had a meeting yesterday with the local authority. It raised the issue of the expense that tenders come in at. It is astronomical for Traveller accommodation. When a contractor has to go onto site it is as though a premium is put on the quote and the level of work is questionable sometimes. We had a new development in Cork about 20 years ago. I remember liaising with the families down there. Handles broke off the widows after a couple of weeks. There were issues like that and with drains. Repairs on Traveller accommodation are constant. An effective estate management structure is part of that problem. There need to be regular meetings where issues can be logged. I remember attending estate management meetings where there were backlogs of maintenance of repair issues for years. Only yesterday at that meeting, the TAU in Cork told us it does not have a designated works team to fix Traveller accommodation issues. They are logged with the teams in the local authority. If it is a specific job, it has to tender for it and when it tenders there is a premium on the work needed to fix the issues.