Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I will have to leave the meeting early because I have to go to Árainn Mhór in County Donegal. It is an unpredictable drive, to put it mildly. I thank the witnesses for their presentations, which are useful. The Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act provides that housing authorities have a statutory responsibility for the assessment of the accommodation need of Travellers and the preparation, adoption and implementation of multi-annual Traveller accommodation programmes in their areas. From listening to what has been said thus far, we are not short of committees or plans, including adopted plans, but we have a problem with implementation. Has there been an assessment of the number of Traveller families on halting sites who are seeking alternative accommodation, including Traveller-specific accommodation? These are families growing up and seeking to have their own accommodation as adults with partners and so on. Is there a figure in that regard? It is the measure at which we need to get.

My next question relates to the caravan loan scheme. The Department decides a number but is that number decided on an objective need basis or a budgetary basis? In other words, is it because the Department only has a certain amount of money? If the latter is the case, we, as the Oireachtas, have a role. I would certainly press within my party that whatever money is needed to give decent accommodation to everybody is given to them. We rightly highlight when migrants are in poor accommodation. Equally, we should ensure that all the people who have been here have good accommodation. Ms Timmons stated that 77 loan applications, worth €2.66 million, were approved. How many of those were drawn down? How many were paid out?

I was in correspondence with the Ombudsman. According to what I was told in respect of Galway, the amount of money for a caravan is €40,000. I was wondering if this was a Department regulation or whatever. From what the CCMA has said, that figure appears to be what is laid down to the local authorities. That amount would not buy a new mobile home and it would not put it on site. Has the Department done costing of the real cost of getting a mobile home and putting it on site? These are not the little caravans one might pull with a vehicle. Rather, they are permanent dwellings. Has the Department costed the real cost of a mobile home, including its installation on a site, and doing that at public service cost? I presume these are local authority sites.

I was told that in the case of Galway there was one supplier specified. That is the second constriction: the applicants have to go to a particular supplier. Many of them favoured other suppliers where they were getting better quality caravans more suitable to their needs. The third issue, which arises from that, is whether, in the context of this €40,000, any consideration is given to the size of the household to be accommodated. It would be like saying there is a certain amount for building a local authority house but no differentiation is made between the cost of building a one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom or four-bedroom property. That differentiation is made in the case of local authority houses. Again this year, a number has been provided, but has there been an audit of the actual need? We need to get to the bottom of this.

In my area, there are many Travellers living on overcrowded sites, particularly in Galway city. The county seems to be ahead of the city. The CCMA outlined what is done in Galway but I will set out what is not done. There is an overcrowded Traveller site, namely, Bishop's Field, and the lease is up on it. To my knowledge, to date, we do not have anywhere to go. There is a second site that was used while the transient site in Galway was being refurbished. The transient site has become a permanent site and the temporary site was used to temporarily house Travellers who were still living on the side of the road. That was meant to last for three years. The planning ran out after three years. The council sought permanent planning. An Bord Pleanála refused it and for the past ten years the families have been living on the site with no sight of alternative accommodation. The local authority does not even have planning permission for the site. Those two examples do not cover that most of these sites are already over-full, as is the other Traveller-specific accommodation. It was stated that most choose but the choosing part is affected by the age cohort, such as the older cohort. If you tell a person there is a settled house in Traveller-specific accommodation available immediately and ask whether he or she wishes to take it, but the person looks around and sees that no new Traveller-specific accommodation has been built to a high standard and in good condition in the past ten years, that is a loaded question. A person who visited my constituency office was probably wise to pick the bird in the hand rather than the bird in the bush.