Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Clearly, I will not have an opportunity to reply to all questions. As such, I want to pick up on one or two themes. I thank Senator Colette Kelleher for a very impassioned speech today. I have known Senator Kelleher for a long time and have rarely heard her speak as she did today. As such, I am certainly taking on board what she has said. I will also comment on Senator Mac Lochlainn's comment. It is not often he calls for unity of purpose across political parties. Normally, I am at the sharper end of his comments. However, I agree with him on this issue. On something as fundamental as how a country treats a sector of the community, in this case the Traveller community, we should try to agree and have a real resolve to deliver what we have agreed. How can we deal with something that requires a much more comprehensive solution than has been provided to date? I will do what I can to give leadership in that regard. We will have to tease through some of those issues and it may be that we do not agree on everything. However, we will probably agree on the fundamentals.

I am more than aware of what is taking place in Spring Lane in Blackpool, Cork. I have taken a personal interest in trying to resolve that and am meeting with the city council and others who are trying to resolve it, including the former Deputy, Kathleen Lynch. The current conditions in which families are living is not acceptable in modern Ireland. There are other similar examples in other parts of the country I am sure, but the Spring Lane issue is the one with which I am most familiar. The solutions are not easy. There have been many efforts to try to provide solutions. I tried to get involved as Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. We made €1 million available for Traveller community horse projects so that we could try to put some structure on the facilitation of the Traveller community to interact with horses, which is a strong connection they have. None of that money was drawn down because we could not find political agreement. We also had real challenges in trying to find agreement within the Traveller community - let us be honest - in terms of sharing facilities and so on. Families did not want to share. Of course, leadership is needed all around from representatives and I am delighted that so many are here today to listen to this debate. However, the core leadership needs to come from Government and those who have power to make decisions and allocate significant resources. We also have to give leadership at local government level.

Comments were made on individual political parties. Of course, the local decision-making process has to allow people to disagree on locations and sites, but what is not acceptable is to prevent the provision of Traveller accommodation at a certain site while not having an alternative that is better and can actually provide solutions. Simply blocking solutions without having an alternative is not acceptable. I was in Galway recently and I met a number of Traveller families who were anxious to speak to me because there is particular pressure in Galway city currently in relation to trying to find accommodation. In the absence of that, there are families who are simply being evicted from short-stay accommodation which is not acceptable or legal in particular areas. That is creating a lot of friction between the settled community, the Traveller community and gardaí, which is not good for anybody.

This is a bigger political problem than it is anything else. We have an obligation to try to create acceptance within communities as well as to give leadership as political parties. It is easier to do that if there is a combined approach across political parties. I hope and expect that we will have another debate when I have a bit more time to go into some of the detail on some of the broader Traveller issues which have been raised here today. I was asked to come here to focus specifically on the fire safety issues which are very current. On some of the questions as to why there has not been 100% implementation or response, there are valid reasons that is the case. In fact, the figures are a lot higher than they are in the report because the period it covers ended on 1 July. A great deal has happened since then. However, there is a need for consensus building, education and awareness-raising as well as the implementation of practical measures like smoke alarms, fire blankets and so on. We need the help of representative groups for the Traveller community, many of which are represented here, to actually change approaches within the Traveller community as well as to change attitudes within the settled community. If we can do that, we can make significant progress.

My final point is on budgets. We have increased the budget significantly for next year. My understanding is that the budget was reduced because of a change in policy in order to accommodate the Traveller community through the standard social housing model to a greater extent rather than to simply allocate all money for Traveller families to Traveller-only accommodation. That switch resulted in a change of emphasis in budgets. Clearly, it has not worked. More funding is not the answer on its own given that the funding which is there already is not even being drawn down and spent. However, I accept that it is part of the equation. The commitment in a budget is, in many ways, the proof of a political commitment to get something done. That is why it is important that we have seen an increase for next year. It is also important to have a plan as to how to approach and spend the budgets that are there because the current approach is simply not working. We need to recognise that and change accordingly. I look forward to the support of other political parties if and when we decide to change the approach to get more effective results.