Pádraig Rice (Cork South-Central, Social Democrats)
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I thank the witnesses very much for joining us today. I welcome this second iteration of the national Traveller and Roma strategy. It is quite comprehensive. When we talk about these issues, it is always important to set out the context. We have to remind ourselves of how poorly the State has treated the Traveller community over decades and the State's consistent violation of the rights of Travellers. That is not just my opinion but the opinion of domestic and international human rights bodies over a period of time. To look at housing, in 2019, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that 24% of Travellers faced severe housing deprivation, a rate 30 times higher than that for the general population. When it comes to health, life expectancy is more than a decade shorter. Looking at the Roma population, 50% do not have access to healthcare and the community faces huge levels of social exclusion. There is a huge amount of work to do to catch up on those decades of underinvestment and lack of support from the State and to correct the State's poor track record in terms of the violation of the rights of Travellers on so many fronts.

As I said at the start, the strategy is quite comprehensive and is welcome. What concerns me most is implementation. Government Departments and the State generally have implementation deficit disorder on many fronts. There has been a failure to implement many of the great strategies that have been put together. I will tease through some of that and some of the barriers and how we could address some of those to ensure full implementation of the strategies. I will start with funding. Looking through the documents we have been given and the strategy, none of the actions seem to have been costed. There is no funding linked to each of the individual actions. Will the witnesses talk to us about the funding that has been provided by the Department for the different actions and pieces within the strategies?