Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

On amendment No. 204, one of the most horrific reminders of the need to get the issue of providing culturally appropriate and decent accommodation for Travellers and its link to planning is the tragedy in Carrickmines, which is in my area, where ten Travellers lost their lives in 2015.

One reason that fire happened was the Carrickmines site was exempt from fire and planning regulations as it was an emergency temporary site. There is a direct link, in what was a horrific tragedy, to a failure of the planning system to take into account and see as imperative the need to provide decent accommodation for the Traveller community. That it was supposed to be temporary emergency accommodation but had actually been there for eight years, exempt from normal regulations, and that ten people lost their lives as a result, including a young mother who was pregnant, tells its own story. It was absolutely horrific. The reason that sort of situation can persist, of course, is basically prejudice. We all know it. Traveller accommodation targets and so on are often not met because of opposition or a political lack of will to deliver on it, which is linked to prejudice. Travellers, therefore, get left in these appalling conditions where a tragedy like that can happen. We have to do something about that to prevent Travellers being left in accommodation where the normal rules do not apply and to ensure there is proper regulation, safety and all the rest. That is why it is imperative. We owe it to the Traveller community who we have let down to specifically put an imperative in our planning and development system that we will provide the accommodation they need and not leave them in those kinds of squalid and dangerous conditions, and, indeed subject to the prejudice that most usually manifests itself on the question of the provision of Traveller accommodation in particular locations. Of course, opposition which is driven by prejudice is often masked in planning terms - the “We are not racist, but” type of thing. It is very important if for nothing else as a signal to the Traveller community that we are serious about this stuff and that we recognise how we have failed them to date, how that has been linked to failure of local authorities in developing plans for their areas to ensure decent and culturally appropriate accommodation. That is the reason we are putting these amendments forward. The Government should accept it.