Ms Sinéad Carr:

I will leave the Dublin city question to be dealt with by Mr. D'Arcy. In terms of the accommodation of horses, I am actually a horse lover myself, so I understand the appreciation. There are a couple of challenges when we are looking at that. Group housing is generally built in urban areas, and to be fair to most of the Travellers I am dealing with, that is generally where they want to live. When dealing with horses, we are looking at at least 1.5 acres per horse in terms of animal welfare. One then has to look for a space for waste disposal for the horses and for the payment for that. One is also going to look at the whole issue of animal welfare. Notwithstanding the infrastructural costs associated with that, one also has to look at the environmental and amenity cost, which brings its own problems when adjoining other residential units. There is also a need for somebody to actively manage that and to support the horse.

Having said that, there are ways of doing it. It does not necessarily have to be through group housing or the housing provision element. There are plenty of NGOs and other groups out there that can work with the council on looking to access supports to facilitate the renting and management of lands by certain families. That is probably the way it can work best if it is done in a collaborative manner. It is something that can be looked at, but to tie it in with the accommodation causes a significant problem. However difficult it is now to get accommodation through the system, this would make it even more difficult, particularly when we are stuck for zoned serviced lands around the place.

On the accommodation for transient sites, we need to look at that but it is my view that we need to look at it under a different structure. For a start, dealing with it on a county-by-county basis is not meeting the transient needs of those families. The management of such sites also needs particular attention. I know from dealing with the representatives of the Traveller community on our own LTACC over the years that their preference was to deal with the immediate accommodation needs of their families before we started looking at the transient needs of somebody else. I understand where they are coming from. It is not as easy as just dropping a couple of sites in a couple of counties and Travellers will turn up and leave as appropriate. There are other significant issues that need to be looked at if such sites are to work effectively.

I will leave the questions on Dublin city to the other witnesses, as I cannot deal with those.