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Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Accommodation: Discussion (Resumed) (21 Mar 2024)

Pat Buckley: ...also spoke about public sector training. I am very interested in that. She referred to cultural awareness training facilitated by the Traveller Equality and Justice Project at University College Cork. What they do there is absolutely amazing. I was lucky to attend night classes there for two years. It took me two years to learn one line, the last line that always stuck in my head. ...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Accommodation: Discussion (Resumed) (21 Mar 2024)

Colm Burke: I thank the witnesses for their presentations. Unfortunately, I had two other meetings this morning and I apologise for being late. I am a former member of Cork City Council, which was very go-ahead in relation to Traveller accommodation. I think we had, and still have, five different sites when an awful lot of other local authorities had nothing at all. One of the problems that has...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Accommodation: Discussion (Resumed) (21 Mar 2024)

Colm Burke: I raised another issue. Cork City Council has been very progressive with regard to making available accommodation - in fact, it has five different facilities - but a problem arises when we say that a facility is suitable for 15 different units but suddenly there are 30 or 40 different units in there. The local authority then finds it difficult to provide the infrastructure because the site...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Accommodation: Discussion (Resumed) (21 Mar 2024)

Colm Burke: ...families living in its jurisdiction and plans for that number, and then all of a sudden a whole lot of other people come in from outside the local authority area, which is what has occurred in the Cork case. They were not people who were residing within the local authority area prior to the facility being developed. As a result you may have 40 different residential units, where...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Accommodation: Discussion (Resumed) (21 Mar 2024)

Colm Burke: That is one of the problems that is there. In fairness, Cork City Council has been very progressive in its approach, but we have others where the same approach has not been taken.

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Accommodation: Discussion (Resumed) (21 Mar 2024)

Pat Buckley: Following up on the last Deputy's point, I know the place he is talking about in the city. I am just throwing this out regarding local authorities and the county council. When I was on Cork County Council, we had a Traveller's consultative committee and it was absolutely excellent. Members of the Travelling community ran that committee. We were the ears while they were the mouths. It...

Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community: Traveller Accommodation: Discussion (Resumed) (21 Mar 2024)

...resources the Government wants to give us, but that is not a structural answer. In addition, there is a need for local services. Why does somebody have to ring somebody in Dublin to take a case in Cork? That is why the initiative that was mentioned, namely the Traveller Equality and Justice Project in Cork, is so important. That received funding for a period from the EU, but that...