Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I support this amendment. It is particularly important because I fear that, as this Bill envisages, the involvement of private finance, commercial interests and so on, one will get the usual stuff occurring, which is the real answer as to why the affordable caps are different in different areas. It is because they are worried about the impact on the market. Those sorts of prejudices are often what drive anti-Traveller sentiment. There have been efforts by certain political parties to cynically trade on anti-Traveller prejudices to stop Traveller-specific accommodation, because it will affect the price of housing. That is a terrible prejudice. A Member who was a Minister in the previous Government, I think she is now a Minister of State, helped get herself elected on the basis of opposing Traveller-specific accommodation on the Mount Anville site in our area. I wonder whether that site will be given over to the LDA, which is designated for Traveller-specific accommodation but was opposed by Fine Gael councillors. I wonder whether the requirement to provide Traveller-specific accommodation on sites like Mount Anville will be a legislative obligation. I support what Deputy Ó Broin said.