Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 26 September 2024
Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community
10:30 am
I welcome our guests. I remind people of their privileges and that they cannot participate if they are outside of Leinster House, etc. Those giving evidence have to be physically present within the grounds of Leinster House and should not criticise or make charges against any person, or identify him or her by name or in such a way that makes him or her identifiable. I think we all understand that.
I propose that we publish the opening statements from our witnesses. Is that agreed? Agreed. I suggest that we invite our witnesses to speak for five or ten minutes and that we allow members to ask questions and make comments for approximately five minutes. Members may ask more questions after everybody gets an opportunity to speak.
The committee is looking at Travellers' experience of the justice system. Today we will focus on Travellers in prison. The committee has already visited Castlerea Prison, Mountjoy Female Prison - the Dóchas Centre - and Oberstown Children Detention Campus. Travellers represent less than 1% of the population yet we make up 8% of male prisoners, 16% of female prisoners and 21% of children detained. The committee looks forward to hearing from our witnesses about this very important subject. We would like to hear about the experience of Travellers dealing with the justice system, including prison, and how we can make things better.
We are grateful to our witnesses for coming here today. They include representatives of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, the Traveller Justice Initiative, the Traveller Mediation Service and Barnardos.
Our witnesses are all very welcome here today.
It is very important for us as a committee to examine the justice system and, most importantly, why there are so many Travellers in prison in this country and what supports we need for Travellers. I am sure we all know the answers but it is important we document those answers and that this committee has a responsibility to work with the Traveller community.
We will begin with one quote a young man said to me in 2020. It was his first time to be in court and he was very nervous. I said to him he will be okay and that everything will be fine. He said, "No Eileen, I am already guilty." I said no, he would not be and that was up to the judge. He said, "I am guilty on the basis of being a member of the Traveller community." I want us all to be mindful of that before we start.
I will open it up to our witnesses. I ask Ms Saoirse Brady to begin.
9:30 am
Mr. Sean Laffey:
Uisce Éireann has a forward planning section in asset management. It engages with all the local authority planners when preparing local area plans or county or city development plans. We also engage very closely with the regional assemblies on the regional spatial and economic strategies, RSESs. We are involved in that whole area. We see the pressure that is on to provide housing and the necessity for water and wastewater services.
We have capacity registers which talk about locations where we have capacity in water and-or wastewater treatment. Ultimately, if we have to extend the network, it is far easier to do so and bring water or wastewater services to a site than it is to upgrade a water or wastewater treatment plant. The issue we have is twofold. One part of it is that even if tomorrow I said that I would add an extra 5,000 cu. m per day to the Abbeyleix water treatment plant, the reality of the environment in which we operate is that is probably seven years away, to be perfectly honest about it. We cannot turn these things on at the touch of a button. In the submission we made on the national planning framework to the Department we are really asking for a very focused plan-led view of the whole country. Local area and county development plans are done on a five-year cycle. We invest on a seven- to ten-year cycle and what we need to be able to say is that we will push the button on Abbeyleix, there will be 5,000 cu. m of water there in seven years' time and the focus will still be on Abbeyleix; it will not have moved to Mountrath.
If we are going to develop and build houses at the scale the Government would like us to build, we have to currently focus on where we have capacity and then strategically plan to put capacity into other areas so it is available when the existing capacity is used up.