Mr. David O'Connor:

I shall deal with the two questions posed by the Chairman on the money issue and housing needs.

I shall repeat what my two colleagues, Mr. Dick Brady and Mr. Martin Riordan, have said about the money side of things and give an example. If one simply adds Fingal County Council's yearly allocation, dating from 2007 to 2012, it would amount to €14.25 million. Then if one subtracts the drawn down sum of €6.6 million for the same period it would look like we had not spent €7.65 million. That is simply not true. Many of these schemes were in the programme year on year. For example, planning permission may not have been granted or a scheme could be tendered for successive years yet the Department continued its commitment. The Department's adherence to its commitment made the county council look like it had not spent the money. That is simply not the case.

I shall outline three schemes that were built in my area between 2007 and 2012. The total allocation for the period was €11.75 million but the actual cost of the project was €6.9 million, a difference of €4.6 million. That proves that it was simply not the case that the money was inadequately drawn down. The money was fully drawn down and no money was given back. It is the simple way that the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government does its sums that makes the council look like it did not spend the money and that is not the case.

In response to the accumulated accusations about what it is we do, that we are not fit for purpose and, to paraphrase what was said, that we cannot spend, plan and deliver, that is patently not the case. The commitment of the local authority in the period between 2007 and 2012 is shown by the fact that the drawdown of capital was €6.69 million. In the same period day to day spending amounted to €8.3 million in maintaining sites which we have done to the best of our ability. When I joined Fingal County Council in 1995, we had a scheme of 12 houses which had received a national award. There are now two houses in that scheme because it has been repeatedly demolished and repeatedly rebuilt during the years and we are at the loss of ten of the units. Mr. Brady outlined a similar situation in the city. We have to cover the running cost of these schemes. There is stealing from the electricity supply and constant dumping. We had one instance in the northern part of the county where a site had been invaded and we had to spend €300,000 in having the site cleared. We would much prefer to spend the money on providing permanent accommodation for everybody concerned.

It is particularly difficult to deal with Traveller issues, although I am not characterising Travellers as being difficult. The issues are complicated and far more complicated than normal. For example, there are extended family issues and preferences to stay within a certain radius of where people are located at present.

I do not accept that Travellers' voices are not heard. They are and constantly being listened to. It is unfair to characterise us in such a way that we are not listening to them. If Travellers believe there is another methodology, perhaps there is an agency that might deliver more effectively across a range of areas. We do not have responsibility for some aspects such as health and education and they should not tar us with the brush of non-delivery when we do our level best at all times to provide services.

The last point with which I wish to deal in my short summary, the full detail of which is contained in our submission, is the issue of preferences. In our Traveller survey we asked people to list their first preference in terms of the ideal accommodation for them. We asked 327 families, 48% of whom expressed a preference for standard housing. I do not accept, therefore, that there is ethnic cleansing, that Travellers are being pushed away from their culture. Some 29% expressed a preference for group housing; 12% expressed a preference for halting sites, while 11% expressed a preference for other accommodation such as rural houses. We have provided rural houses in the face of some very vociferous complaints by local people. We have stood by the Traveller people. I do not want to mention the place name of a scheme, as the Chairman asked us not to name places, but time and again there was an extremely strong anti-development campaign against the scheme. However, we stood by it and councillors, to their credit, voted it through, confident that the Travellers who were going to be accommodated there would look after the place. It has been looked after to an extraordinarily good extent. A very small number of people are creating a problem and making life difficult for us all, but we are certainly not the enemy. We are not incapable of spending or planning - the contrary is the case - and we are more than capable of delivering, but we need to do it in concert with each other. We do not need to argue with or accuse each other in that regard.