Ms Rebecca Keatinge:

I thank Dr. McDonagh and I thank the Deputy. I will address each of those points in turn. I obviously agree with Dr. McDonagh's comments. In respect of reports, the Traveller community itself always says that there are a great many reports. The recommendations of each of these reports are really consistently aligned. The commission itself has repeatedly made the same policy statements and recommendations in its own international reporting. It is obviously draining for the community itself to have to repeatedly come before policymakers and say what they want despite there being no follow-through action. There is a real urgency to this. In our day-to-day work, we see the impact on the community of the deplorable conditions, the impact on children and the trauma experienced. However, I do not want this to be a hopeless message because, as legislators, the committee members have a really important role in keeping that energy going, in pushing the recommendations and in championing the voice of Travellers.

Looking at the report itself, I am struck by four key recommendations. Three are related to the legislative structures. It is these very difficult recommendations that have not been progressed. They are in the area of planning. The committee will have received our submission on the planning Bill. They are also on the need for a single authority to co-ordinate and drive action in this area and the crucial work on the trespass legislation, an ongoing concern and issue for a number of years. On the issue of the audit of living conditions, everyone here is familiar with the conditions on sites and the action that should follow from such an audit. There is an accountability there to follow through on those recommendations and see that action is taken.

On our own work, I am in the legal team and we do a great deal of work to ensure that local authorities and State parties comply with their existing obligations. There are issues with compliance but we are proud to bring those cases forward to try to bring about improvements for our clients.

The wider context is obviously relevant but these issues have been going on for many years. It is not just a resource issue but an issue of political will. There has been a failure to bring about the structural changes that are needed. While it is an important context, I refer to the Deputy to the equality action plans, the accounts of which the commission will publish in the coming weeks. They really drill down into some of the nitty-gritty issues that affect the delivery of Traveller accommodation and services. They show just how niche and specific the issues can be and that they can be addressed without very substantive resource commitments.

On preference, I second what Dr. McDonagh said. Of course, people have to make a free choice but this choice is made within a historical context and in the here and now. We repeatedly engage with clients who are looking at their options. They are looking at their parents and seeing that they have been waiting 20 years for a new halting site to be built but that it still has not happened. If you are making a choice within that context, you have to consider the factors that are influencing that choice.

We work with families that are bringing up their children, who are now nearly reared, who are getting married, and they are looking at the new generation whose choices are inevitably influenced by the experiences of their parents. It is a case of looking at the context of those decisions that are made.

Deputy Ó Cuív makes an interesting point about the ethnicity data. That is one issue we looked at in the equality action plans because, on the recommendation of this committee and the expert report on Travellers, there is an ethnic identifier now in the social housing application form. There is mixed use of the data across the seven local authorities that have completed the plans. Speaking with Traveller groups when preparing the accounts of these plans, many of them noted the sensitive nature of that data collection and that there needs to be a considered process for collecting it. Those are some of the issues that came up in the equality action plan that links in there with some of our work.

Finally, on the standards, it comes across with the caravan loan scheme, which I know is something this committee has looked at, when you compare the comparable position of an individual on the social housing list, whether a Traveller or non-Traveller, if a person is allocated social housing and given a bricks-and-mortar house, it may be fixed up so it is suitable for a child with a disability, for example, but someone who is allocated a bay may have no caravan there, and they have to go through all that to try to get a loan to get a caravan. The parallel position is quite stark when we look at it in that context.