Ms Eithne Lynch:

I might add that FLAC has a public interest law alliance project and within that we are part of a group that brought a collective complaint before the European Social Charter. That was lodged in July 2014. The purpose of that collective complaint was to focus on the rights of local authority tenants. We were examining the adequacy of the accommodation and also the legal remedies available to local authority tenants. Deputy Coppinger raised the issue of awareness raising and access to legal aid. The complaint submitted has been declared admissible. The Government has come back with responses on it and we are expecting a decision by the end of the year. It is looking at legal remedies and the fact that local authority tenants do not have access to a tribunal in the way they would have in terms of the Private Residential Tenancies Board. They do not have access to legal representation. If they have a dispute in that they are potentially being evicted from their home, they must go through a Circuit Court process without access to a lawyer.

In addition to that we have noticed, with our partners who have been involved in this collective complaint, that there are serious issues around adequacy and standards. That is the reason there have been many submissions on the standard of health of the family or the children and also social exclusion poverty because while Ireland ratified the charter 16 years ago, Article 31 on housing was unable to be argued. Additionally, we did not ratify the optional protocol, which means that non-governmental organisations or individuals in Ireland cannot make a collective complaint. However, we can do it through an international body, and that is what FLAC has done with our membership with the FIDH, which is an international human rights body. We are hopeful that by the end of the year we will have an outcome from that. Those findings will be put to the Government and at that point it will have to respond. It is a topical issue. Yesterday, there was the decision on Traveller accommodation, and there have been serious findings in that regard.