David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree that the task force report was a major accomplishment at the time. It differed from similar reports in preceding decades, which tended to see the issue as one of adapting Travellers to settled norms, and focused instead on the need to make specific provision for Travellers and target their requirements. I fully accept the report. It is the philosophy that continues to guide us today. With respect, however, I do not think that we can go back to 1995. Things have moved on, as the Deputy has acknowledged, and we must take our frame of reference from the present day. Much has happened in the interim. I see the National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy, NTRIS, as the starting point. I am concerned with how we can progress its actions and whether we can add to or change them. The strategy is a living document. The Traveller community and its representative bodies are very much part of that and are playing a very strong role in making it work.

On housing, an expert group was appointed in 2019 to review the "effectiveness, implementation and operation of the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act 1998, with a view to examining whether it provides a robust legislative basis for meeting the current and future accommodation needs of the Traveller community which takes effective implementation into account in the context of the recognition of Traveller ethnicity in 2017." The report completed by the expert group is currently being reviewed. It was made available to the Minister in September and is under consideration. The report is a matter for my colleague, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government.

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