Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I commend my constituency colleague on his work to date. He has great enthusiasm for this issue, particularly for the Traveller community.

The OCO report was welcome and it has shone a harrowing light on the challenges that many in the Traveller community are facing. We all agree that our transient and halting site accommodation is substandard and has to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Returning to a point made by Deputy Gould, halting sites need to be future-proofed. There is a familiadimension to the Traveller culture and six to eight bay halting sites simply do not work. Communities may not like it but in reality a halting site needs to be future-proofed and it has to be there for subsequent generations.

I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív that HAP and RAS do not work either. They do not sit well with the Traveller culture, which is very much a culture of a home for life, and that does not fit or feel well with either of those two payments. There is probably a case to be made, therefore, to consider a Traveller-specific rental support scheme.

The key point in the report and in the Minister of State’s opening statement is not fully addressed in any of the accompanying documentation, which is that 45% of the Traveller community are housed in local authority AHBs. I am not seeing where any of the additional supports are coming to local authorities to support those agencies. I come from a county where we have the highest percentage of Traveller population per capita and we have the fastest growing Traveller population aged under 15 in the country. We are very proud of our Traveller community in Longford and they enhance and enrich our local community but Longford County Council and other local county councils would be well-served with additional funding, which would enable them to provide additional support workers to enhance their Traveller accommodation committee and to put staff and boots on the ground to assist these communities.

It is not often that I agree with Deputy Gould but I concur with him that we should bring the best scenarios to the Traveller community while respecting their culture to see how this can enhance the community and bring along the Traveller community together with the rest of an estate. In many instances at the moment I am afraid that our Traveller tenants on our local authority estates feel marginalised and that is a slight on us as housing authorities which we need to address. I do not see it addressed in anything that the Minister of State has laid out in front of us today.