Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are talking here about a human right to safe, affordable and suitable accommodation. We should not have to return again and again to discuss the non-spending of funds allocated to local authorities to provide houses for members of the Traveller community. This is ring-fenced money we are talking about and we need to ensure that it is spent.

It is even more frustrating when the guidelines and direction for where the money should be spent and what type of accommodation should be prioritised is contained in the report of the expert group on Traveller accommodation, which was published in the summer of 2019. The money and the instructions are there. The missing link is political direction and the political will to make it happen.

There is a need for quarterly reporting. The latest spending figures that I have seen are in a reply to a parliamentary question asked last month by Deputy Ó Broin. The job of monitoring on a more regular basis should not fall to Members of the Dáil and "monitoring" is the watchword here. There is no point in allocating vast sums of money to local authorities in the knowledge that without effective monitoring, the money will be coming back to the Department unspent. I suggest a quarterly report on spending and builds for Traveller accommodation be introduced just as they have been for social housing.

The latest figures show that only 45.5% of the Traveller accommodation funding of €14.5 million that is available for 2020 has been drawn down to date. Senator Fitzpatrick mentioned local authorities such as Cork County Council, South Dublin County Council and councils in Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow that have not drawn down any funding at all. It is understandable that construction work may be behind schedule due to Covid-19 restrictions but during the harsh lockdown, there was never any restriction on planning, tendering and awarding of contracts to build badly-needed accommodation. That is where today's debate needs to be focused. We are here to get an explanation as to why nine local authorities did not draw down a single euro from moneys allocated to them to relieve the housing problem in their local areas.Last week, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Simon Harris, announced a package to ensure Traveller participation in third level education during Covid-19. The press release referred to ensuring that members of the Travelling community had access to proper and well-ventilated study space. Why not begin by ensuring that money already ring-fenced for Traveller accommodation is drawn down and spent? Does the Minister of State want more powers? Does he think he has sufficient powers to be able to instruct local authorities that are clearly not engaging with central government to deliver Traveller accommodation?

Will we have to have a further debate in several months on the same issue? I hope not. Is the Minister of State prepared to directly intervene and to instruct local authorities to speed up their planned builds? We also need accountability. Money unspent is money that is not being spent by somebody. It is not an accident. There is a lack of urgency in local authorities and, in many cases, it is very deliberate. Clear direction needs be given that moneys must be spent. Where there is a delay, we need to intervene. Where rhetoric and bigotry are holding up the process, we need to stand against it, even if that means fighting political opposition. As I said before, we need to monitor the spend. We should provide quarterly reports. One of the best reports the Department produces is on social housing, namely, the housing construction pipeline report. It is a very detailed piece of work that lets us all know, per project and per local authority area, where construction is in the pipeline. It would be great to get the same report for the Traveller accommodation programmes.