Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue, which is important. Energy credits were introduced as part of emergency legislation last year. The Cabinet agreed on a special allocation to make sure that the money reached Travellers. The way that was done was that the money was sent to the local authorities. Each local authorities was asked to state how many Traveller families it had. A sufficient quantity of money was sent to each local authority to distribute it. After that, I met with Traveller MABS and other Traveller representative organisations to discuss individual cases where they had not managed to receive the payment. We have traced down and carried out investigations to try to find any cases where that has not happened. New legislation will be passed this autumn to support any electricity credit that happens. It will be different from previous legislation and will take specific account of the specific needs of Travellers, not all of whom have their own electricity meter.

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