Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The review I spoke about that will be completed in June 2022 is a review of the effectiveness of three of our current equality strategies - NTRIS, the national strategy for women and girls and the migrant integration strategy. It is to look at where they have been successful, what parts of them have not succeeded and the issues of intersectionality and how the three equality strategies can better address those issues. That report will help to feed into the design of the NTRIS successor strategy. However, we will not be waiting until that report is done to do anything else.

As I said, the steering committee for the existing NTRIS will continue to meet. I agreed at our last meeting that we will spend the majority of the next meeting focused on hearing what the groups want to see in the next NTRIS. We have NTRIS and in the programme for Government there are commitments to a number of strategies in specific areas, such as an education strategy, an employment strategy and a health action plan. I want to get an understanding of how the overarching NTRIS will operate with these more sectional things as well. There is no point in us being laden with this strategy and that strategy. We cannot spend all our time writing strategies because what we need is implementation. That is the focus, so I want to hear from those groups about how they see those different elements operating. They wanted a Traveller and Roma education strategy in the programme for Government and we included that. They wanted an employment strategy and we put it in. However, I need to understand how they see that working with the overarching strategy. It may be that we have NTRIS as the overarching strategy and we have, perhaps, action plans in specific Departments that will set out, for example, how the seven objectives in NTRIS that are relevant to my Department will actually be delivered and what the measurements of that delivery will be. Again, I want to be guided very much by the Traveller groups in how all that happens.

Regarding the expenditure in the Department, we can send that to the committee. However, €2.2 million of that €5.5 million goes to core Traveller funding, that is, core funding for the major Traveller organisations. Some €480,000 goes to the education pilot programmes we spoke about earlier, which Deputy Stanton introduced. A total of €700,000 goes to other NGO core funding. Those are NGOs that are not solely Traveller NGOs but that work substantially in the Traveller field. The special incentive for Travellers accounts for €440,000. There is core Roma funding of €116,000, a Roma employment project for €400,000, a Roma inclusion project for €200,000 and then €125,000 for Traveller Pride and Roma Day. Then we had €200,000 for specific Covid-19 needs. We can send the information to the committee, but that is an update on the 2021 spending. Obviously, we have not assigned all the subheads yet for 2022, but it was €4.9 million for 2021. Next year we will have €5.5 million, and we can send those figures to the committee.

As regards the special incentives for Travellers, I might write separately to the committee on that. I do not have a huge overview of why there are only seven there. Again, initiatives like that have to be developed across other Departments. Obviously, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment would be significant in terms of supporting employability.

Regarding Spring Lane, I remember a Green Party convention in Cork - it must be 11 years ago - at which the Spring Lane group presented to us. The images are very similar to the images we saw when the Ombudsman did his report. Regarding my engagement in this, it has been discussed in NTRIS. We use our position in NTRIS to engage directly with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to get an update on its progress there and its progress on wider Traveller accommodation. With the Covid pandemic, I have not been out and about as much as I would like but I hope to be in a position to visit Spring Lane when I am on a visit to Cork at some point. Continued engagement to highlight the issues here from both a Traveller equality point of view and a children point of view is important to me.