Ms Rebecca Keatinge:

As Dr. McDonagh has said, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ensures the rights of disabled people, including Travellers. There are key articles relevant to Traveller accommodation including the right to self-determination, empowering disabled Travellers to make decisions about their housing under Article 1. Article 6 addresses the impacts of sexism and ableism on women and girls with disabilities, necessitating gender-sensitive housing policies. Article 7 ensures that children with disabilities have full rights, including suitable accommodation. Article 9 mandates accessibility in all areas of life, including Traveller sites and housing. Article 13 focuses on equal access to justice, enabling disabled Travellers to advocate for their housing rights. Article 33 establishes independent mechanisms to monitor and improve laws, policies and services for disabled people, including Travellers.

Travellers experience respiratory health and chronic health conditions because of damp, overcrowded, poor-quality accommodation, some of which were mentioned. These include pneumonia; cystic fibrosis; muscular dystrophy; chronic asthma; childhood arthritis; cerebral palsy; spina bifida; scoliosis; Hurler syndrome; brittle bone disease; neurodiversity and autoimmune illnesses; and all forms of autism.

This morning, I will focus mainly on the right to culturally appropriate Traveller accommodation. The State is failing abysmally to provide adequate culturally appropriate accommodation for the Traveller community. We make up only 1% of the Ireland’s overall population, but the data indicates that we make up 20% of the homeless population.

Travellers also have significantly higher rates of disability than the general population, with almost one in five Travellers recorded as having a disability in census 2016. This has extensive implications with regard to accessibility issues arising in the provision of Traveller accommodation. Homeless services and agencies do not collect robust data on Travellers and on hidden homelessness in particular, so these stats do not include the numbers of Travellers who are in overcrowded accommodation, sleeping rough or doubling up in bays.

We should all be shocked at those statistics. They are stark evidence of the persistent systemic structural racism, racism and inequality experienced by the Traveller community in Ireland in their access to accommodation. However, we are not surprised because despite some encouraging developments, which include the excellent work of this committee, the State’s failure to advance structural reform in the delivery of Traveller accommodation means that any progress previously made is stagnating. Crucially, the required policy, legislative and oversight frameworks that we and others have repeatedly recommended are still not in place as this Government is likely in the final months of its term. In addition, despite the State signing up to the UNCRPD, which says that disabled people have the right to live independently in a place of their choosing, there is a huge data gap on the significant experiences of disabled Travellers accessing culturally appropriate accommodation.

Over the years, we at the commission have used many avenues to raise issues about Traveller accommodation and increase the pressure on the State to take relevant action. As well as the recommendations in our international reporting, policy statements and our recent submission on the Planning and Development Bill 2023, we have also undertaken an analysis of the provision of Traveller accommodation services in Ireland through our equality review and equality action plan processes.

Taking account of all our previous work to date, I wish to highlight some of the major issues the Traveller community is grappling with. First, the development and delivery of culturally appropriate Traveller accommodation is stagnant. It is badly hampered by issues such as a lack of proper planning and obstacles in the planning process. The ability of the State to provide accommodation is hindered by the lack of cohesion in the policy framework. There is still no single body with authority for oversight and delivery on Traveller accommodation, nor is there any alignment between the various strategies and development plans. We also know that many of the recommendations of the Traveller accommodation expert review group have yet to be fully implemented. In addition, crucially, that effective data collection and the establishment of that single authority - a national Traveller accommodation authority - are yet to be implemented. Unfortunately, the Planning and Development Bill 2023 does not address issues with evictions procedures or provide for changes to the planning process to enable speedier and easier delivery of Traveller accommodation. Travellers often feel that they will not be able to secure Traveller-specific accommodation such as group housing and transient or permanent halting sites due to its limited availability, and the scarcity of accommodation can put pressure on Travellers to apply for standard social housing and, in some cases, accept offers of unsuitable accommodation. Despite the commission repeatedly raising these issues in our international reporting and policy statements and through our legal work, local authority action is just not happening at the necessary pace required.

The commission is also concerned that there are no statutory minimum standards relating to halting site accommodation, whether temporary, permanent or transient, and children are amassing physical and mental health issues as well as educational difficulties, which may affect them for life. As disabled Traveller children encounter intersecting barriers, the commission has previously highlighted the disproportionate impact on disabled children, including Traveller children, who live in overcrowded accommodation and are often without access to technology or living space.

On evictions, little is being done to mitigate the unique impact evictions have on Traveller families. The State is still failing to adopt legislative measures to prevent evictions being carried out in practice without the necessary safeguards. Through our legal casework, on which I, as a solicitor with the legal department, can speak further, we have highlighted the failure of local authorities to properly and proportionately assess the rights of a Traveller family before invoking planning laws to evict them from a site. This is compounded by the fact that the provisions of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act 1994 governing trespass indirectly discriminate against Travellers by criminalising an intrinsic way of life of this group.

In conclusion, we at the commission ask that the State, which includes committee members as legislators, urgently prioritise rights-based legislation and policy reform that can underpin sustainable progress in the delivery of Traveller accommodation, especially in the areas of planning and delivery, funding, meaningful and constructive engagement with Travellers, addressing evictions and the introduction of statutory minimum standards for all halting sites. In a submission to this committee in December 2023, Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre recommended security of tenure, that is, good decent accommodation as a linchpin or prerequisite to exercising other rights.