Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Minister of State is in the House to listen to this. What he has to try to get into his mind is what it would be like if tonight the people who are here had to sleep in a 20-year-old caravan or mobile home that is damp, in this kind of cold weather, and had to do this on a council halting site in this day and age. Quite rightly, we give out about the conditions for people looking for asylum and for students. Pettymindedness has done a great disservice to Travellers. When the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, spoke to the Joint Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community, he told us the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage had "rolled out a six-month pilot preferential caravan loan scheme in four local authority areas." The scheme would allow participants to draw down up to €30,000. He said the Department hoped to roll out the scheme nationwide in 2022, following a review of the pilot. It did roll it out nationwide, following a case taken to the ombudsman by a woman in my constituency. What did the Department do? It made the scheme nationwide but it put a quota on the number of caravans or mobile homes. In a case in Galway, there were 24 applicants living in atrocious conditions and the Government decided to allocate four caravans. At a time when a decision was made last week - I am not against the decision - to spend hundreds of millions on student accommodation, could we not give each Traveller family that needs a new caravan the money to get it? This is a shame on our nation. I hope the Minister of State goes back to the Department and puts this right forthwith.

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