Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

If you were getting paid by the word, you would be a millionaire. I thank the ladies and I hear their frustration. The Chair said if something is not working, change it. It is as simple as that. Just change it. They mentioned a national Traveller accommodation authority. There has to be something like that set up but it has to have the resources and the backing as well. They made much mention of local authorities. Some local authorities are better than others. Some local authorities do not spend any money and the question that has to be asked is: why is not that money being spent?

There have been enough reviews. I absolutely hate the word "review" because it is kicking the can down the road or staking it on another review on the same shelf. When we came into this committee, we said, as Deputy Ó Cuív would say, we would concentrate on accommodation to try to get some kind of a quick good win out of this but listening to all the witnesses who have come in here, it is not rocket science to say that whatever system is there now, this simply is not working.

Ms Keatinge mentioned certain obligations and something being obligatory. These words, "obligation" and "recommendation", have to be changed because we have to talk about imposing issues. I do not know what way we will go around it. I do not even want to go near the caravan scheme, for example. I am just interested that where there is an action, there is an instant reaction. On housing and specifically if a person has a disability, you are taking him or her out of the ethnic group. Everybody with a disability in the country is classed practically as a third-class citizen because that system is already broken and the resources are not going into it.

If someone is marginalised, it is even more difficult to access any proper services, not to mention appropriate accommodation for those services. We could be talking about this and debating the reviews, the recommendations, the obligations, where the money has gone and how much has been spent on report after report, but we do not need those reports anymore. We need brass tacks, such as an organisation set up with specific power, the backing of human rights organisations and so on. Like everything, people have to engage with their council, but it has to start here at Government level as well and the Government has to understand that the council is limited. There is a massive housing crisis at the moment, which makes it even more difficult. I suspect our guests are not on anyone's priority list - I will probably get into trouble for saying that because it is not PC but they can correct me - because there are bigger issues to worry about.

How do we encompass all of this to say that if it is going to be a housing issue, it will be a housing issue for everybody? When I say "housing", I mean accommodation in general, which could be a trailer site or whatever. In our guests' opinions, should there be a Traveller accommodation authority, specifically to work with all the councils? It would be resourced and would have a plan. The councils have budgets and we know that some are spent and that others are not. I am thinking outside of the box here. Everything goes back into the Central Fund. If there were an authority and if a council did not spend its allocation of, say, €1 million in a year, the authority would have the power to take the €1 million and direct it elsewhere for something that was in train. It would be still the same pot of money and the same level of funding but it would be utilised better. An authority could have power but could help local authorities, believe it or not, to spend funding that had been allocated better, not on reports but on bricks and mortar, concrete or whatever you want to call it. It would also give better accountability for the implementation of whatever accommodation plans are submitted.

Like anyone, Travellers have to be big stakeholders in this. Their needs will be specific to them, so it will need to be almost a case-by-case basis for accommodation. If someone wants a bungalow, for example, it has to be totally wheelchair accessible. It is about common sense, which does not seem to be present in all these reviews and plans. Would it be a good idea to have such a national Traveller accommodation authority that had power but also had the capability to deal with those budgets if they were not spent appropriately?