Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has rightly highlighted that accommodation is central to resolving this issue and is one of the most pressing issues. Accommodation, health, particularly mental health, and education are the probably the issues that come up most regularly and most strongly within NTRIS, with NTRIS committee meetings and with my own engagement with individual groups as well.

Deputy Ellis spoke about actions having been taken against local authorities and how we press local authorities to do more. The work of the Ombudsman for Children in focusing on the Spring Lane site definitely has put a real focus on both the role of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and in particular on the role of the local authority in question. I know because the Ombudsman for Children has engaged with my Department and has been critical of elements of my own Department in terms of direct provision. However, we built a really strong relationship and it has a monitoring role but it is an ongoing engagement. I hope we will see that same sort of engagement with Cork City Council in terms of the Spring Lane site.

There are other ways in which pressure can be exerted on local authorities as well. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, was in with me a number of weeks ago and it has been conducting an engagement with each local authority across the country, asking it what are its policies and practices in respect of Traveller accommodation. The commission has received replies from most of them and may be engaging in - I do not want to say a punitive process - a follow-up and monitoring process that can be escalated to a punitive process, if necessary. That is going on at the moment and it might be interesting for the committee to write to IHREC and seek an update on that process. I certainly found it interesting and they are following up at present. The commission found that the policies and practices are incredibly diverse and different across our local authorities. That is problematic itself because Travellers, obviously in terms of their nomadic lifestyle, can be engaging with a whole different set of policies, practices, and approaches in each of our local authorities.

I absolutely agree with the Deputy in terms of the importance of horse projects as a clear manifestation of Traveller culture and as a practical step to teaching young Travellers how to look after their horses and how to avoid any animal welfare issues that may have been encountered in the past. They are really worth supporting.

The Deputy mentioned the area of DEIS in the context of education and yes, we will see a very significant increase in spending on DEIS schools next year. The committee will have the Department of Education appear before it next and its representatives probably will be able to speak to that in more detail. I am delighted to see the overall increase in DEIS spending. The Deputy spoke about the importance of homework clubs for young Traveller children and that is definitely something I would recognise.

School-age childcare for Travellers is something that had been impacted by some of the measures around the national childcare scheme, NCS. I announced a removal of one such measure in the budget this year. I will not get into huge detail but it is this idea of wraparound hours, whereby hours spent in school were subtracted from the total number of hours that children could spend in after-school. It basically meant that during term time, children from disadvantaged areas would not be able access after-school provision. That will be changed from early next year because of the new funding measure that I introduced in this year's budget. I hope that will have a significant impact on after-school services in a range of disadvantaged communities and in particular in the Travelling community.

A key point is access to preschool for Travellers. As we all know, there is the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme with two years of free preschool. I do not have the figure to hand right now but there is a difference of about 10% or 15% between participation of the settled community and participation by the Travelling community in ECCE.

Immediately that gap in education is established before the first day of primary school, so part of the Traveller education strategy I spoke about earlier will be to ensure higher levels of participation by Traveller children in the two-year free preschool ECCE programme. That is a key priority for me which I can follow up in my Department.

On dormant accounts, it is what it is but it is a good additional stream of funding, particularly for more discrete projects. For example, next year there will be funding of just short of €1 million, at €940,000, to fund measures to address conflict and mental health issues in the Traveller community, a Roma adult education and training project, targeted resources to support young people from the Traveller community to join and be active members of their local Comhairle na nÓg and Traveller and Roma community education posts supports addressing the impact of Covid-19 on participation, retention and progression through the education system. Those are the four discrete projects my Department will be funding through the Dormant Accounts Fund. It is a useful way to guide money to a particular project for the short to medium term, rather than the long term, and perhaps use it and assess whether the project was successful and whether it got the outcomes we spoke about earlier.