Pádraig Rice (Cork South-Central, Social Democrats)

I suggest that the preference for standard housing might be because of the living conditions in some of the local authority-run halting sites. For example, a report by the Ombudsman for Children published in 2021 identified a range of issues, including extreme overcrowding, inadequate sanitation and a range of other issues. I will quote some of the people who lived on such sites, especially some of the young people. A girl aged 12 said, "walking up to school you see all the rats ... they [come] running up and down the walls of the trailer”. Another girl said, “people ask [me] why I’m dirty, but I’d be ashamed to say. I don’t want to say it was from walking out of the site”. A third girl said, “it [can take] two or three hours to heat up a bath and we’re all using the one water". A boy aged seven said, “we only play in puddles”. A 16-year-old girl said, “when you put your hands out of the bed in the mornings, the blankets are all wet”. A girl aged 12 said, “it’s like an abandoned place that people forgot about, it’s like we’re forgotten, we feel like garbage”. These are testimonies from people living on halting sites in this country in the not too distant past. This is how people feel. These are the real words of Travellers living in conditions on local authority-run halting sites in this State. This is my concern about the rights of the child, in particular, and the rights of Travellers more generally.

That ombudsman report is damning. It identified a range of failures, namely, the failure to consider the best interests of children, including those with additional needs; failure to clear passageways for children to go to school; lack of transparency and accountability in local authority processing; and failure to comply with and implement the minimum requirements of the Traveller accommodation programme, which places a statutory duty on local authorities to meet the accommodation needs of Travellers. It goes on to call for intervention at CEO level, and for the CEO of the relevant local authority, in this case, Cork City Council, to take responsibility. Does Mr. O'Sullivan think things changed in that local authority as regards its attitude and approach to Traveller housing and accommodation?