Ms Catherine Joyce:

I concur with what Ms Quilligan has said. Private rented accommodation is a huge issue in our area and some Travellers opt for this only because long-term permanent Traveller-specific accommodation is not a real, viable option. Travellers such as the MacDonald family in Dunsink Lane have been on the accommodation list for the past ten years. The local authority has committed to providing accommodation for them yet they have not got basic accommodation ten years down the line. They live on a site with no electricity, portable toilets and no proper sanitation and I cannot understand why the local authority, whatever way they dress it up, is sending back over €7 million or not drawing it down from the State budget and at the same time this family is in dire need of accommodation. The local authority has acknowledged this.

In our local authority area there is a serious situation because 28 families are on unauthorised sites, 17 are sharing accommodation with a family member or their parents. They are effectively homeless. They are not homeless individuals but homeless families. They are not on the local authority accommodation list because they are on unauthorised sites or doubling up in somebody else's bay or unit of accommodation. That is not just our case, it applies in the rest of the country. There are serious problems with Travellers being identified in the first place. It is not possible to plan for numbers to be addressed if the numbers are not acknowledged in the first place. How can the need in ten years time be predicted if the present need is not accurately counted now?

In answer to Deputy Murphy’s question about how accommodation would work if we were to take it out of the hands of the local authorities, I would put it simply, the National Roads Authority had the power to put a road through the Hill of Tara because it was identified as a road that would give access to people from Meath and the north Leinster area. That road went ahead regardless of objections and the court action taken to prevent it. An accommodation unit should be given the power to do the same thing for accommodation. It would need to work with the local authority on that provision but it needs to be able to say that there are X families in an area and X units are needed, they should be provided now, the budget is there and available and should be used to do that. There are mechanisms. We have long looked at the possibility of taking it out of the hands of the local authority or out of its control because we see consecutive plans not being implemented and the budget not spent. The numbers of Travellers either on unofficial sites or forced into private rented accommodation is increasing all the time. While people around this table might say that it is an option it is not an option that Travellers would take if they had a choice. They take it only because there is no alternative.

Local authorities have committed to doing things for Traveller organisations or for individuals over many years but they have not been able to deliver. In the greater Blanchardstown area we worked with the local authority to develop a plan for a Traveller resource centre and ten years later that has not been implemented. We worked with the local authority. It gave us the funding to do the research for the resource. We worked with the local area partnership company on how it would meet the needs of the community as well as those of the Travellers. That resource centre has not been provided and budgets have not been drawn down to meet the needs of Travellers. Not one Traveller site in the greater Blanchardstown area has a community resource centre or facility.

The local authority has ignored its plans and the resource materials available to it to implement its plans to address a need that has been identified not only by us but also acknowledged by it. There is a concern about the lack of implementation of accommodation plans and the lack of a commitment to make such provision. There are local authorities represented in this room that are doing well. Fingal County Council has been able to deliver in the provision of accommodation, but it is not delivering in the maintenance or upkeep of sites or the provision of new builds. In 2011 and 2012 it did not provide for new builds; in 2010 it provided ten units and in 2009, ten units. Since 2009, therefore, some 20 new units of accommodation have been provided in our local authority area. For me, the rationale or reasoning for sending back money when these are the only units that have been provided does not add up.