Ms Eileen O'Shea:

John O'Sullivan and I will be presenting today.

The Traveller Visibility Group and Cork Traveller Women’s Network appreciate the opportunity to share the feedback and lived experience of Cork Travellers facing accommodation issues. We are aware that our national organisation, ITM, has already presented here. I echo all of its statements and comments, calling particularly for implementation along with the National Traveller Women's Forum.

For over three decades both Breda O’Donoghue and Brigid Carmody have been advocating for Traveller rights, including access to Traveller accommodation in Cork city. No additional Traveller accommodation has been built in Cork since 1989. John O'Sullivan has been a Traveller activist for over 15 years. He along with Brigid Carmody and Breda O’Donoghue represent Traveller families' and individuals’ issues and accommodation needs at the local Traveller accommodation consultative committee, LTACC, the Traveller accommodation unit, TAU, and homelessness services among other areas.

I will give some wider feedback on Traveller accommodation in light of this joint committee's recommendations. Due to many issues compounded by societal and systemic racism, Traveller accommodation is a politically sensitive issue that impacts and influences decision-makers at the top level who are trying to deliver Traveller accommodation. The circular detailing a temporary mandatory moratorium on the requirement of Part 8 planning for public projects is welcome but it is not being used with regard to Traveller accommodation in Cork and it is difficult to see how the mandatory aspect can be enforced. There have always been negative submissions against new Traveller accommodation developments at Part 8 stage. It was reported verbally by Cork City Council members and officials that the current Cork city Traveller accommodation plan, TAP, had over 1,000 submissions against the council’s adoption of the TAP, although the exact number of submissions against the TAP was not shared formally.

While we have an active Traveller interagency group, TIG, Traveller accommodation unit and the LTACC in Cork, Travellers are not seeing any improvements on the ground, no real positive change, even with the involvement of the local authorities in these Traveller-related working groups.

The previous five TAPs have not assisted in the delivery of Traveller accommodation. The current interventions and resources, along with ring-fenced funding in Traveller accommodation budgets are not delivering real homes for Traveller families in Cork or across the country. In the last 20 years or more, two sites were built in Cork. Both were replacement sites with the older sites being demolished, leading to significant improvement in living circumstances and a few additional units. Both replacement sites were driven by the old sites impacting the development of significant commercial interests, namely, Apple and the Mahon Point Shopping Centre. Incidentally, impacting commercial interests seems to be more of a real impetus in delivering Traveller accommodation than the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act or the last five TAPs.

We need to overcome the real barriers impacting Traveller accommodation which are rooted in systemic and societal anti-Traveller racism. We respectfully ask for an independent body responsible for the delivery of additional Traveller accommodation to meet the needs of Travellers currently in need of homes, namely, a national Traveller accommodation authority or agency. The need for this has been evidenced during each of the last five TAPs. The Government-appointed expert group on Traveller accommodation recommended the establishment of such a body several years ago. We do not believe that it is in the local authority’s gift to deliver on Traveller accommodation when the barriers to delivering Traveller accommodation are political in nature.

The application of the public sector equality and human rights duty, PSEHRD, needs to move from the aspirational to the real. Provision of Traveller accommodation needs to be PSEHRD proofed both at a national and local authority level. This needs to include access to caravans and mobile homes, the caravan loan scheme, funding streams to provide culturally appropriate accommodation, transient halting sites, etc. For example, there is currently no funding stream available to local authorities to provide a caravan or a mobile home. We only have the caravan loan scheme, where an approved social housing applicant has to take out a loan, or the emergency replacement scheme solely in the case of destruction by fire, storm or flooding where the local authority can access 50% of the funding from the Department leaving the local authority to resource the remaining 50%. This is clearly not sustainable nor does it take into account the needs of the Traveller community.

John O'Sullivan will now discuss the caravan loan scheme.