Mr. Bernard Joyce:

The Irish Traveller Movement would like to thank the committee for the invitation to cover matters relating to Traveller accommodation, particularly the Expert Review on Traveller Accommodation. Before I continue, I would like to take a minute to remember that on Saturday, 10 October 2015, a blaze swept through a temporary site at Glenamuck Road in Carrickmines. This was the deadliest such disaster in the country since the Stardust fire. The vulnerability of Travellers was posed by substandard, overcrowded, shared accommodation, which still effects over 1,700 Traveller families six years later. This issue has not been addressed and remains without the urgency that is required to bring about the necessary changes. We owe it to them and to every other Traveller on this island to implement in full the expert report recommendations. Of course I welcome the earlier contribution of the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, to the committee today, however, there is an urgency required to reform a broken system that ultimately failed our community.

We are in a national Traveller accommodation crisis in Ireland. This is not of our making. Our children live in some of the worst conditions in the world. Despite legislative protection under the Traveller Accommodation Act, a low estimate shows that over 1,700 Traveller families are living in inadequate, unsafe conditions stacked against their health, education, employment and life opportunities, below basic human rights standards. Some 39% of Travellers live in overcrowded accommodation, 24% live in severe housing deprivation and 5% live without piped water or sewerage supplies, according to the 2021 report by Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, and Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, on monitoring adequate housing in Ireland. In some local authority areas, for example Galway City, Traveller families make up 50% of the homeless families while accounting for just 1% of the overall population.

The budget for Traveller accommodation was spent in full last year, which we welcomed. However, it is important to note that €4.4 million of that budget was spent on basic emergency provisions to mitigate against Covid-19, including water tanks and portaloos, and not on new developments. In 2020, seven group houses were built or refurbished. At this rate, with no ramping up of Traveller accommodation, the crisis will worsen. There is no end in sight. I remind the committee of the €72 million that went underspent from 2008 to 2019. This was one of the primary causes of the current Traveller accommodation crisis. The lack of delivery and underspends have been highlighted internationally through the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, CERD, and the Council of Europe, as well as nationally, most recently in the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission’s equality reviews, and by the Ombudsman’s for Children Office.

The Ombudsman for Children’s Office, in its investigation this year of one local authority halting site, produced a report called No End in Site. It found that: "There was a failure to consider the best interests of children, including those with additional needs, and to ensure that children living on the site enjoy a safe, suitable standard of accommodation". It is also found that "There was a failure to comply with and implement the minimum requirements of the Traveller Accommodation Programme ,TAP, which places a statutory duty on local authorities to meet the accommodation needs of Travellers to address the significant inequalities facing them." One child was quoted in the report as saying: "it’s like an abandoned place that people forgot about; it’s like we’re forgotten; we feel like garbage". Another child, aged 12, said: "walking up to school you see all the rats. They would be running up and down the walls of the trailer." In context, there are 138 people on this site who are using toilets and washing facilities that were designed for only 40 people. There was evidence of children sleeping on makeshift beds that were cramped into the living-dining areas. The report highlighted the unreliability and lack of facilities such as heating, lighting and water. This site is by no means unique. Similar testimonies have been reflected by Travellers for decades throughout the country. These reports shine a light on the living experiences of our community.

The Traveller Accommodation Act was introduced so that local authorities would have a statutory obligation to plan every five years for the accommodation needs of Travellers in their own county. The ITM’s own analysis of all 31 authorities' TAPs found a repeated pattern of a lack of planning for future population growth, programme periods with inadequate targets, a lack of planning for Traveller-specific accommodation and identification and zoning of sites for developments, and inconsistent approaches to data collection and needs analysis. Our analysis also found an overreliance on the housing assistance payment, HAP, for delivery. The discrimination faced by Travellers in the private rental sector means that HAP is an inadequate option. It further lengthens the time spent by Travellers in emergency accommodation, in hidden homelessness, or in severely overcrowded conditions.

A 2017 Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, report found that Travellers were 22 times more likely to experience discrimination in the private rental sector. The Residential Tenancies Board found in a 2014 survey that 82% of landlords surveyed were unwilling to rent properties to Travellers despite the Equal Status Act.

Just one example of this kind of discrimination arose recently, where a Traveller family managed to secure accommodation to exit homelessness. The letting agent that was due to rent to the family was then harassed by local anti-Traveller residents and subsequently withdrew from the proposed lease. The Covid-19 pandemic has only further highlighted the inequalities that we always knew existed. Travellers have been extremely vulnerable to Covid infection with analysis showing they were 2.6 times more likely to be affected than the general population, exacerbated by poor living conditions. Despite the available Government support to mitigate these risks, local authority implementation was inconsistent despite the evident and disproportionate outbreaks in the community.

When we look to solutions to the crisis, the Traveller accommodation expert review's 32 recommendations provide a roadmap to real progress. We welcome the work that has been done so far to implement the 32 recommendations of the expert review to address the issues we have outlined. The Irish Traveller Movement is a member of both the programme board for its implementation and the national Traveller accommodation consultative committee, NTACC. However, over two years after the review’s publication and governmental commitment to its implementation, we are now concerned about the rate of progress. Some 18 of the recommendations are due to be completed in 2021, while most recent progress reports do not demonstrate this is likely to be fulfilled. No subgroups have been established for any of the recommendations to facilitate consultations with Traveller organisations.

The Government’s Housing for All plan commits to prioritising the implementation of the expert review recommendations, however there are no targets included for Traveller accommodation in the plan and there are no timelines attached for the implementation of the 32 recommendations. The provision of targets, timelines and sufficient resourcing for each of the recommendations, ensure what has been promised is possible, that those responsible are held accountable and ensure that success is measurable. We ask the committee to ensure that these targets, timelines and sufficient resources are in place and clearly outlined to ensure this accountability. All 32 of these recommendations are important. However, we would like to particularly focus on three of them. They are: the establishment of a national Traveller accommodation authority to independently monitor and oversee the planning and delivery of Traveller-specific accommodation; the repeal of the trespass legislation to end the criminalisation of nomadism on this island and the trauma of evictions; and to remedy Ireland’s breach of Article 16 of the European social charter in relation to eviction procedures. We must also circumvent Part 8 of the planning process to remove a key barrier to delivery. We have sent a briefing document to committee members and we can take questions. We thank members for their time and consideration.