Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have had part of this discussion before. The Minister of State will know that, in 2019, the expert group on Traveller accommodation was published. This was a hugely significant report. The Housing Agency and Professor Michelle Norris had undertaken a very detailed study of the Traveller accommodation programmes which had been published by the Department and the Housing Agency some years previous. Damien English, as the Minister of State with responsibility for Traveller accommodation, put together this expert group. It did a very significant body of work, including engaging with this committee, and made recommendations. In the report there are ten recommendations specifically dealing with planning and five of those require legislative change. I wish to put on record what they were and ask why they are not in this Bill. It would seem that if this was the once-in-a-generation reform of planning and an independent expert group on Traveller accommodation put together by Government published a report in 2019 that recommended legislative changes with the planning system to address the inadequacies of our Traveller accommodation programmes and the Dickensian conditions in which Travellers live, it would make sense that those changes would be in the Bill. The report's second planning recommendation was to:

Put in place the legislative provisions to suspend the reserved function of elected members for approval of Part 8 proposals for Traveller accommodation, and also to suspend the reserved function relating to the agreement to dispose of land for the purposes of developing Traveller accommodation and provide these as executive functions. This suspension should be reviewed after a period of five years.

The report's third planning recommendation was to:

Put in place the legislative provisions to provide an alternative and direct route for Traveller-specific accommodation to An Bord Pleanála [which would obviously be an coimisiún pleanála in this Bill] in line with the processes established for Strategic Housing Development. This provision should be reviewed after a period of five years.

There were three longer term planning recommendations. Recommendation 7 seeks to:

Update the Traveller accommodation and planning legislation to improve general alignment of the different mechanisms for planning for the provision of Traveller accommodation. Most importantly, the timeframe for the production, adoption and implementation of Traveller Accommodation Programmes should align with each local authority’s Development Plan timing and cycles.

That is not in this Bill as far as I can see.

Planning recommendation 9 seeks to:

Provide the Regional Assemblies with a formal role in the advising on, coordinating and monitoring of the local level delivery of Traveller accommodation at regional level, and, in the shorter term pending this new role, designate local authorities in each Region as leads in the areas of review, policy, delivery, etc.

Planning recommendation 10 seeks to:

Ensure that any new national level agency/authority would incorporate a role in monitoring statutory plans and referrals, as necessary, to the Office of the Planning Regulator.

I have two questions. First, have any of these recommendations been accepted by the Government? Is it the position of the Government that the absence of these recommendations from this Bill means that it does not accept those recommendations and does not intend to progress them? If the answer to that question is "No" and in fact the Government is supportive of the recommendations - a number of years have passed since 2019 - why are they not in the Bill in some shape or other? This report set out actions that the Government needed to take on foot of very significant empirical evidence of the failure of the status quo, as Deputy O'Callaghan outlined, in that detailed housing agency departmental report. It seems remarkable that these recommendations are not in the Bill. I would be interested in the Minister of State's response.