Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Traveller community faces many challenges and inequalities in employment, in education and in health in particular. Irish Travellers' level of access to healthcare and life expectancy estimates are shocking, with figures suggesting that Irish Travellers die 11 to 15 years earlier than members of the general population. The statistics relating to their mental health are strikingly worse than the equivalent figures for the general population. It is an unfortunate reality that members of the Traveller community face discrimination every day at many levels of society. Their experience of interactions with Government, local government and the community at large is often negative and can make them feel both excluded and marginalised. It is a reality of Irish society that the Traveller community is often treated in a way that would not be tolerated anywhere else.

In 2010, the United Nations declared that access to clean water and sanitation is a basic human right. This was already a right for children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2016, the UN said that Ireland needed to make sure that sites where Traveller communities live have proper water and sanitation facilities, including toilets and showers. The UN and the WHO estimate that each person needs 20 l to 50 l a day for their basic needs. Those needs include water for drinking, cooking and cleaning.

A serious situation has been ongoing for more than a year at a Traveller site on the Ratoath Road in Finglas, which is in the Final County Council area. Up to 16 men, women and children are living on this site. Their ages range from two years to 78, and a woman living on the site is due to give birth shortly. The families have been living on this site for 40 years and, to date, they have no shower facilities or proper sanitation and, because the site has no direct access to an established water supply, they rely on people to carry buckets of water to each household. Imagine having to wash yourself, your children and your clothes using buckets of water. This is not something we should be seeing in the Ireland of the 21st century. Unfortunately, almost every individual at the site has tested positive for Covid. When coping with the virus, they had no access to proper sanitation or a normal water supply. Today, there are two people fighting cancer and another has a serious heart problem.

During the past year, the council has been delivering tanks of water to the site once or sometimes twice a week. This was supposed to be a temporary measure but, more than a year later, it is starting to look more like a permanent solution. I am thankful that, when I first raised these concerns, Fingal County Council responded but I have also been working to get it to put in place a more permanent water supply. I understand that certain issues and legal matters have been raised with regard to the ownership of the site but such concerns should be separated from the implementation of measures to provide basic human necessities. In an attempt to resolve this long-drawn-out issue, I have exhausted every avenue to find a solution for these families. This is why I ask the Minister of State and his Department to intervene as a matter of urgency with a view to resolving this issue and bringing to an end the terrible situation these families find themselves in.

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