Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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My experience is that if an official agency threatens legal action bodies tend to move, whatever about a private individual like a pub. If you take a case against a local authority, it is my experience in general that Departments that are well run try to minimise the number of cases that go to the Ombudsman and that would result in legal letters, not to mind legal action. They move very fast if there is a perceived threat, in particular if they are likely to lose the case. It would be very useful for this committee to know the number of cases, as the IHREC is the statutory body in regard to litigation. Ms Keatinge might also indicate how many cases are against agencies of the State, be they local authorities, State bodies or the State itself, in other words, the Attorney General and Ireland. That would be very useful for us.

The reason I raise the wider issue is because we had one case in Galway where the city council eventually decided to build culturally appropriate accommodation in a bigger scheme but An Bord Pleanála turned it down saying it was premature because the infrastructure was not in place. It is getting caught up. There is a constraint on the amount of zoned land because there was a total underestimation of what was required in the NDP. We keep hitting that in every section of the provision of accommodation. I am not saying it is the problem – Ms Keatinge is dead right, as it long predates that – but it is exacerbating the problem and impacts on trying to solve it in some cases. How much is the IHREC coming across that? I am not excusing anybody, but every year we seem to be adding to the layer of challenges to provide all types of housing, in particular Traveller-specific housing. I wonder how much that is becoming a further problem on a road that has 100 problems that we face.

Ms Keatinge also made a comment about what I think are section 8 permissions.

A new phenomenon seems to be happening whereby they are not going before the council and the chief executives are not signing off. They are not doing either of those things and are balking at doing them. That has been my experience. How do we deal with that particular syndrome if there is local disquiet?