Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

The Office of the Ombudsman for Children published “No End in Site” in May 2021. One of the recommendations, at section 7.14.2,states, “That a system is in place to ensure routine and emergency maintenance works and upgrade works are addressed in a timely manner and that contracts with external service providers are proactively managed.” Cork City Council formally responded to this, stating it would put an updated system in place to ensure routine and emergency maintenance and upgrade works are carried out efficiently in quarter 4 of 2021. We are now in quarter 4 of 2022.

As Deputies Ellis and Mitchell said, we visited the site last year and were appalled at the conditions people were living in. We met one mother of a large family and the family's youngest son, who suffers from the rare Williams syndrome. They highlighted the damage caused to the roof of the family’s Portakabin. The matter had been reported to Cork City Council prior to our visit but it saddens me to report that, almost one year later, the matter remains unaddressed. In fact, it has got worse, as the roof started leaking and the leak has got steadily worse. The mother said on Friday that she can only imagine what will happen given the heavy rains, and today is the first clear rain day in Cork over the past four weeks. There was also another situation where a family at the lowest end of the site had literally to step into a mini-swimming pool to get out of their unit, even though three contractors had already submitted assessments to put in concrete flooring. This cannot go on.

The Traveller accommodation unit of the Department should be following this up strictly with Cork City Council and directing it to implement the things it was supposed to do and fix the issues.

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