Pádraig Rice (Cork South-Central, Social Democrats)

On budgets, it is always about choice. The State has choices it can make in terms of how it allocates its overall resourcing. My concern is that minority communities, the Traveller community in particular, have been left behind and failed by the State. The State has repeatedly not allocated enough funding to address the very serious shortcomings in Traveller accommodation identified by international human rights bodies. These are very serious failings. There is an onus on all of us to put demands on the Department to allocate more funding when it makes those choices and when choices are made about the allocation of funding and how it is spent. Ms Carr made a good point on flexibility in this regard.

Preferences for standard accommodation were also mentioned. Are those preferences sometimes related to the living conditions on some of the halting sites?