Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

With great respect, I think it is wrong that social workers are being paid from the Traveller accommodation budget because social workers are needed by the entire population.

We are not going to resolve the matter here and just wanted to put the matter on the record.

On the HAP schemes, I presume the witnesses would agree the ideal is that few Travellers or indeed, very few or any of the population would be in the HAP scheme if we could achieve the right outcomes. The optimum or the best outcome for Travellers is to be social housing and in their own appropriate housing or whatever. Can the witnesses comment on the HAP scheme in terms of the number of Travellers involved and how the scheme is working and on their reflections on that?