Apologies have been received from Senator Noonan. This meeting is to discuss Traveller accommodation. Our witnesses are, from the Irish Traveller Movement, Mr. Bernard Joyce, director, Mr. Michael O'Donnell, national Traveller accommodation policy officer, and Ms Mary Connors Aldridge, co-ordinator; from the National Traveller Women's Forum, Ms Margaret Casey, project manager, and Ms Maria Joyce, co-ordinator; from Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre, Mr. Martin Collins, co-director, and Ms Mary Connors, Traveller activist. They are all very welcome.

I ask anyone attending remotely, which is not the case at the moment, to mute their microphones. As the witnesses are within the precincts of Leinster House, they are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentations they make to the committee. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty as Cathaoirleach to ensure this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person or entity outside of the Houses, or an official of the Houses, either by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

I invite Mr. Joyce to make his opening statement. He will be followed by Ms Casey and Mr. Collins. We will then proceed with questions and answers.

I bid the Chair, Deputies and Senators a good morning. This is not my first time here. I have been before the committee many times. I thank them for the opportunity to once again speak about Traveller accommodation and housing. That is certainly welcome. I am joined today by my colleagues, Michael O'Donnell, national accommodation policy officer, who is on my right, and by Mary Connors Aldridge, co-ordinator with the Traveller community development project, CDP, who is on my left. Together, we will speak on Traveller issues, families who have been waiting for too long, children growing up in overcrowded or unsafe conditions, and elders living without dignity. The community has been promised progress for decades but very little has changed.

In 2024, approximately 1,710 Traveller families, representing approximately 6,800 individuals, were living in unsafe or inadequate conditions on unauthorised sites or in shared housing. Over half of those affected are under 24 years of age. Around 70% of the Traveller population is accommodated by or with assistance from local authorities, including 1,451 families in private rented accommodation, many of whom face insecurity due to rising rents and unstable tenancies.

Despite these realities, delivery remains alarmingly low. Between 2019 and 2024, only 96 new Traveller-specific units were built by local authorities under the Traveller accommodation programmes. In 2024, just 32 new halting site bays and group housing units were delivered, compared with over 6,000 new units built for the general population. In 2025, only 26 new Traveller accommodation units were completed nationally. Every year without delivery carries a human cost of declining Traveller health, deepening exclusion and fading hope. Behind every statistic we mention today is a family, a child, waiting for a home. The cost of failure by the State is felt in damp trailers and halting sites, in the anxiety of parents who fear they will never be accommodated and in the heartbreak of our young people who see no future beyond waiting lists and broken promises.

This is not merely a housing and accommodation issue; it is a human rights issue. It is about dignity, equality and the right to belong. Yet, deep structural barriers continue to block progress. Traveller accommodation operates without a national strategy, a dedicated budget or accountability. There is no centralised tracking, designated agency, inclusion in housing delivery action plans or national audit of need. This absence of structure leaves families in limbo, living in conditions that would be unacceptable for any other group in Irish society. Travellers have been excluded by design from both current and previous housing plans, siloed from mainstream housing and social policy.

In December 2026, the Irish Traveller Movement reviewed 31 local authority housing delivery action plans. Of the 30 available online, five made no reference to Traveller accommodation programmes, TAPs, three stated that Traveller targets were omitted because there was no national requirement and 22 made only passing reference. This confirms what the expert review report from 2019 already identified, namely, that the missing piece is governance. We need an independent authority to oversee delivery. Since that report, strategies for other vulnerable communities have been developed, yet seven years on, Travellers are still waiting. Without leadership, there is drift. Without accountability, there is neglect. Without urgency, there is no delivery.

We cannot speak of equality while maintaining a system that delivers inequality by its very design. We cannot speak of inclusion while families remain excluded from the most basic right - a home. The Irish Traveller Movement stands ready to work with the committee and the Government to ensure that the next chapter in housing policy is not another report, but a real turning point, one that delivers homes and dignity for Traveller families who have waited far too long for their accommodation need to be met.

Today, we again call for a national Traveller accommodation authority and a national Traveller accommodation strategy and action plan with specific targets for disabled Travellers, children, those at risk of homelessness or eviction and single-parent families.

We also call for defined targets for Traveller accommodation within the national housing plan for the period 2025 to 2030 and for integration of adequate provision for larger Traveller families across all social housing delivery models. Only through leadership, accountability and inclusion can we ensure that equality is not a promise deferred but a right delivered.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members. We have provided our submission to the committee. We will be happy to answer any questions.

I am delivering this statement on behalf of the National Traveller Women’s Forum, NTWF, because my colleague Ms Margaret Casey was unable to attend. I thank the Cathaoirleach and members of the committee for the opportunity to address them again today. I will keep my statement as brief as possible, particularly as members have copies of our submission.

We want to be very clear from the outset that the issues we are raising today are not new. The NTWF appeared before this committee in 2021, when we raised many of the same concerns. Five years on, Traveller families, particularly Traveller women, are still living in unacceptable conditions. The gap between policy and reality remains and, if anything, is getting wider. Despite repeated commitments, strategies and action plans, many Traveller families continue to live in overcrowded, unsafe and unsuitable accommodation. Traveller families remain disproportionately over-represented in the areas of homelessness and housing insecurity, while accommodation need continues to grow faster than delivery.

The lack of provision of Traveller accommodation is one of the clearest examples of structural inequality in Ireland. It affects every aspect of life, including health, safety, education and opportunity. The core problem is not policy; it is delivery. Over recent years, only a fraction of planned Traveller-specific accommodation has been delivered. There have been just 772 Traveller-specific outputs against a target of more than 3,000. Only a very small proportion of them were new units, with the majority relating to refurbishment and maintenance. As a result, overcrowding and homelessness persist. At the same time, elements of existing policy, including the continued criminalisation of nomadism, undermine the ability of Traveller families to access accommodation.

For Traveller women, the consequences are profound. Traveller women often carry the responsibility of caring for children, older relatives and family members with additional needs in overcrowded and unsuitable conditions. They are managing family life without privacy, without adequate space and often without the basic security that safe accommodation should provide. Traveller women also face heightened risks within homelessness pathways due to the combined impacts of racism, sexism, discrimination in housing and exposure to domestic and gender-based violence. The impact on physical health, mental health, family well-being and children's futures cannot be overstated. Meanwhile, the continued reliance on the private rented sector as a pathway out of homelessness is particularly problematic for Traveller women in light of the well-documented levels of racism and discrimination they face in accessing accommodation in that sector. This further limits their ability to secure safe and stable housing.

There is also a lack of accountability. Local authorities continue to fall short, without consequence, and there is no effective system of oversight to ensure delivery. At the same time, gaps in data mean the full extent of inequality is still not properly measured. Local authorities can, and do, repeatedly fail to meet accommodation targets without meaningful consequence, while the State continues to report commitments rather than outcomes. Traveller families do not live in policy documents. They live with the consequences of policy failures.

Traveller accommodation requires a decisive shift from commitment to delivery, from plans to outcomes and from unclear responsibility to clear and enforceable accountability. This must include the establishment of a strong national oversight mechanism with the authority to monitor, co-ordinate and enforce Traveller accommodation delivery. We are here again to ask what will change now to ensure Traveller accommodation commitments are finally delivered in practice, not just restated in policy. We do not want to be here asking the same question in another four or five years.

If the Cathaoirleach will allow me a slight liberty, I want to refer to an issue that we might explore during questions and answers. It has come to light in the past week that the Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026 is to be absolutely railroaded through the Oireachtas and enacted as swiftly as possible, without any real dialogue or consultation. We are very concerned about the consequences its provisions will have for Traveller families, particularly women and children, in terms of how they are applied in practice. For Traveller women who are exposed to gender-based violence or those exiting the prison system, the risks are compounded. Any situation in which individuals or families are deemed ineligible for emergency accommodation is very serious. The way the habitual residence provision will be applied under the new Bill, if enacted, will have serious consequences for Roma and Traveller families, particularly those who are nomadic or who have to move between different counties for different reasons, including as a consequence of domestic and gender-based violence.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members for the invitation to appear before the committee. We have made a submission, which members can read in their own time. I will be very brief in summarising some of the main points. I am not sure whether it is acceptable, in effect, to plagiarise committee proceedings, but I will be doing so. Only a few weeks ago, we appeared before the Oireachtas housing committee to speak on the same issue. Very little has changed in the meantime. I apologise if my points seem very familiar and boring to people.

I have been involved in this struggle and movement for approximately 40 years, as have many of my colleagues. I first got involved in 1985, when the vexed issue of the day was the lack of accommodation provision for Travellers right across the country. More than 40 years later, the key issue for the community remains the lack of accommodation provision. This speaks volumes of an institutional legal framework, processes and systems that are inherently dysfunctional. Despite the enactment of the Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act 1998, which puts a legal obligation on local authorities to implement their Traveller accommodation programmes, TAPs, the systems and structures in place are inherently incapable of delivering what is required in terms of the provision of culturally appropriate accommodation for Travellers.

That systemic failure is evident in the rising number of Traveller families living in unsafe conditions. We now have 1,710 Traveller families, or some 6,800 individuals, living in unsafe and inadequate conditions on unauthorised sites or forced into sharing overcrowded housing. More than half of those affected are under the age of 24. Furthermore, the Department records that 20% of all Traveller households applying for social housing are currently surviving in homeless, institutional or emergency accommodation.

It is important to emphasise that we can become very desensitised when talking about numbers and statistics. However, behind those numbers and statistics are thousands of men, women and children who lack basic services, such as access to running water, sanitation and refuse collection. This is beyond a humanitarian crisis. It is nothing short of scandalous that we allow this situation to prevail in what is a rich developed country. Travellers' living conditions are akin to those in developing countries. It is a shame on our political classes and leaders that this humanitarian crisis is allowed to continue.

Accommodation is recognised in international law as a linchpin for the exercising of other basic human rights, such as access to health, education and employment. In our context, secure accommodation also facilitates nomadism, as Travellers who have secure accommodation in the winter months are more inclined to go travelling during the summer. One of the key issues is that the provision of Traveller accommodation is too heavily politicised at local authority level. There is also an inherent racism in the local authority system whereby politicians will not vote for Traveller accommodation.

For this reason, we, along with colleagues in other Traveller organisations, have called for the establishment of a national independent accommodation authority or agency with the necessary mandate, legislative framework and resources to get on and do what local authorities have consistently failed to do for decades. We want an authority modelled on what was established in the North of Ireland, namely, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, which was set up to counter inherent sectarianism in housing allocations.

The existing crisis will only be worsened by the enactment of the Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026. Pavee Point has raised serious concerns regarding Part 2 of the Bill, which proposes to introduce new legal residence and habitual residence conditions for access to social housing supports.

Furthermore, the proposed Committee Stage amendments threaten to extend those conditions to emergency homelessness accommodation. Pavee Point is deeply concerned about the disproportionate impact these measures will have on Travellers and Roma, who already face extreme levels of housing exclusion, discrimination and poverty, as evidenced throughout our briefing here today. The habitual residence condition, mirroring provisions in social welfare law, has already been identified by UN human rights bodies as a significant obstacle for Travellers, Roma and other vulnerable groups in accessing services to which they are entitled.

To address the situation, we have a number of recommendations. First, we call for a pause on the accelerated timeline of the 2026 Bill to allow adequate time for consideration, to seek independent human rights analysis and to ensure that any residence conditions do not remove the crucial social safety net from those most at risk of homelessness. Second, we reiterate our call for the establishment of a national independent agency. They say the definition of madness is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results. We have been doing the same thing consistently for 40 years. We need a new approach, and that is the establishment of a national agency. Third, there needs to be an immediate moratorium on all evictions. We cannot allow evictions to take place where Travellers have been failed by the Government and local authorities. Fourth, we want the introduction of an ethnic identifier across all data sets in order to know precisely what is involved because if there is difficulty in measuring it, there is difficulty in managing it. Fifth, there needs to be better alignment between the Traveller accommodation programmes and city and county development plans. If Traveller accommodation is not specified in city and county development plans, local residents have strong legal grounds, and such grounds have been used to block the provision of Traveller accommodation. Sixth, we must explicitly recognise Travellers as a priority group within mainstream policies and strategies and avoid the silo approach.

I may be back in front of you, Chairperson, and members of the committee next Wednesday evening - I am not quite sure - to speak specifically about the concerns the residents on Dunsink Lane have. People will know there is a massive plan for the area, with over 3,000 housing units and local infrastructure such as community centres and play areas. People will know that Travellers have been living in that area since 1972, beside one of the biggest dumps in Ireland at the time. The dump was decommissioned, I think, in 1993 and the site is now prime development land. There is a real concern that the Travellers will be displaced - effectively, ethnic cleaning - to make room for settlers. I will hopefully be back in front of the committee next week with some of the local residents to elaborate on our concerns about Dunsink Lane.

Finally, what is needed, overall, is strong moral leadership, ambition and courage from our political class to do the right thing in terms of the provision of accommodation for Travellers.

I thank Mr. Collins. We will bring in members now.

I welcome our guests. I will start with Mr. Joyce's submission. In it he gives statistics, one of which is that there were 96 new Traveller-specific units built between 2019 and 2024. That is a very stark figure. Then he says there were 32 new units for 2024. I am not questioning him on a personal level, but those figures have been checked out really thoroughly, have they?

Yes.

There is no margin of error there.

It is certainly helpful that Senator O'Reilly asks that. If he is surprised by the statistics, he should be because they are shocking. There are people from Waterford and Wexford here today who can speak about those figures, but that is the reality. Traveller accommodation is not being built.

They are stark figures.

They are.

I just wanted to remove any doubt as to the sources or anything like that. How does the Irish Traveller Movement find these figures? It does research on each county, does it?

The figures are pulled through parliamentary questions. Occasionally, they are also presented to the National Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee-----

Perfect. That is fine. They are so stark that it is a valid question.

I have a long number of years' experience as a local authority member. In fact, all through that time I was on the Traveller accommodation committee in my county. We did a lot then, relatively speaking. I understand why the Irish Traveller Movement makes this call, and it is consistent among all the organisations. The Irish Traveller Movement calls for a new national Traveller accommodation authority. I can understand the call, but the witnesses can appreciate that among local authority people there will be an inbuilt reluctance to run with that unless it is beyond necessary. How would it differ from the current system, and what powers would the witnesses see it having? How would they see it rectifying the problem? I accept the problem and it is very stark. I could deliver an introductory speech, as we all could, about the gravity of the problem, but the witnesses have done that so eloquently I will not repeat it. I do empathise on the problem, but how would the witnesses see this working out, do any of them want to say? What kind of powers would it have? Who would be on it? What difference would it make? Would it be another talking shop?

If you do not mind, Chair, I can come in here, as other colleagues can. To be clear, we are calling for a national accommodation authority. However, the expert report on Traveller accommodation has also indicated overall governance and change that is required. There is a need for an authority that will have oversight, monitor Traveller accommodations, actually look at the cost and the budgets, have responsibility, work with local authorities and look at the action and delivery of the plans across the country. I have probably said this before: there is no central point in terms of Traveller accommodation across the whole country. There is no central strategy. There is no budgetary-----

Yes, I get Mr. Joyce's point. It would not interfere with the working of the local authority-----

Absolutely. In fact, it is about adding value and complementing the work of local authorities-----

That is a critical point that needs-----

It is really important. It would also bring the added values and expertise into the area of housing and planning and in terms of what Ms Joyce said earlier about implementation. That is the key to delivery of Traveller accommodation across the country.

I want to pass over to my colleague Ms Mary Connors Aldridge from Waterford to give the committee a really clear example of the systematic failures.

It is very important to put this into context. Actually, I have a few small examples I would like to give. In Waterford in particular, we have two sites that have been for a very long time in dismal, appalling condition, and families have been left to live in them. Kilbarry is over 40 years old. It started off as only a site for caravans, then some units were put in, and over time they have evolved into what we would consider houses where families are living, but they were never purposely built. We have conditions now where families have one door, no back exit and dismal mould infestations. Since the TAP has started, and since our organisation has been in situ in the eighties, there has been a call for development on this. TAP after TAP, year after year, there has been no progression, despite several consultations over the years with the residents and hopes and dreams built and children born and reared and now having their own children left in these conditions. In addition, unfortunately, children who were born and reared have died without ever having the experience of being able to go into a room and close their door because their lifelong living has been in sharing rooms with seven, eight or 12 siblings and parents. That is their reality and that is all they have known. In Ireland we can be very proud of how progressive we are in certain contexts, yet we have families living like this.

It is also really important and contextual to the question the Senator asks to point out that in Waterford, a couple of years back, residents of Carrickphierish had to bring a High Court appeal against Waterford council and the elected representatives there who had attempted to block the progression of a site for multiple families. Thankfully, that was overturned at the High Court for various reasons, including relying on misinformation and not following proper procedure.

That a family had to bring it to that point was quite an extreme example but, unfortunately, not a unique one. Eventually, those families were able to bring it back to the panel and get it progressed. However, we are now four, five or maybe six years on and those families are still waiting. While we can say that, on paper, it has moved on to the next stage, there is no progression. It is at the consultation stage but there has not been any movement on it. The whole point of having an external body is to have accountability over this.

To date, those families are left in dismal conditions. We have lost children. People are suffering with mental health and every other impact possible. As noted already, there has been a lot of progression around Traveller education, employment and other health areas but if a person’s home and foundations are not solid, then they are on rocky ground. There is always a risk. Despite all the work of the Traveller organisations and professionals, including the work that individuals do, if someone’s home is gone tomorrow, they are brought back to point zero. Contextually, it is important. It goes back to the point made here that when we are talking about figures and statistics, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of families and children who have a human right. They have a fundamental right to safety and privacy. They are being left in these conditions.

I wish to make a couple of brief points. The National Traveller Women’s Forum very much challenges the notion that the establishment of a national authority would not interfere with the work of local authorities. Committee members have just listened to Ms Connors Aldridge. At a meeting of the housing committee, which Mr. Collins referenced, Ballyfermot Travellers Action Programme, BTAP, provided another clear example of the failure of a local authority. It subsequently met the committee solely on that issue and all the reasons the local authority failed in that regard.

The international human rights court also ruled on Spring Lane. We could list the local authorities’ failures all day when it comes to Traveller accommodation and its implementation. Despite local Traveller accommodation consultative committees, LTACCs, being in place, Travellers are absolutely exhausted from engaging in those processes over the past 24 or 25 years without outcomes. However, they are still engaging to try to bring outcomes. I absolutely disagree with the notion that the national authority would not interfere with the local authorities because they are not delivering or doing their job.

The Department of housing adopted the findings of the review of the 1998 Act in 2017, which had a specific recommendation on establishing a national authority. While a paper is being developed, we are still waiting to see the fruition of that recommendation.

There are models and examples out there. Mr. Collins mentioned the Northern Ireland housing authority. There are models to go from. Let us be frank - the State has taken functions and powers from the local authorities time and again when they failed to deliver, whether it is in the area of roads, the environment or other key infrastructure that is incredibly important. Traveller accommodation is not a priority, however. If it were a priority for politicians, it would have been taken out of the remit of local authorities a long time ago.

That very issue of removing powers from local authorities was raised in the Dáil this morning. Mr. Collins wishes to come in.

Maybe at some stage, my colleague Ms Connors might wish to say a few words about her experience in Wexford. I totally endorse everything Ms Joyce said. I feel very strongly about it. In fact, it is counterintuitive for me to even suggest having a national accommodation agency and taking powers away from local authorities because I believe in decentralisation and more powers for local authorities. We are one of the most centralised decision-making countries in Europe, if not the world. It is counterintuitive for me to say this but the reality is that local democracy has not delivered for our people. The evidence is overwhelming. It is there for everyone to see. We need a new approach. I am quite clear in that regard. We need a national, independent agency that is independent of local authorities.

If there is to be a relationship and a role for local authorities in a new context, they must be subservient to the role of the national agency. I am clear about that. They have failed. They are inherently unable and unwilling to provide Traveller accommodation. We need a new approach. As Ms Joyce alluded to, when the State felt local authorities could not deal with certain issues, it took those powers away from them. The former National Roads Authority and the national environmental agency are good examples. Uisce Éireann is another example where it was felt, rightly or wrongly, that local authorities could not deal with these large infrastructural projects. The same principle applies in this context. Local authorities have failed miserably to deliver. We need a new approach. That is why we need a new agency. I reiterate the important point that if there is to be a role and relationship between the two structures - the local authorities and the national agency - the local authority must always be subservient to the role of the national agency. I am very clear about that.

I will provide a couple of statistics to reinforce what everyone has been saying. Wexford has the third largest population of Travellers in the country. The TAP assessment of need totalled 96 families, including projected needs. Figures supplied through a parliamentary question show that Wexford supplied only two units in 2025. One was a caravan loan and the other an acquisition.

I have been with the LTACC for about 25 years. Very little has changed in that length of time. I was a community worker in Waterford and I worked voluntarily in Wexford. I will outline a typical LTACC meeting. We had four meetings agreed at the start of the year. One was held in January. The April meeting was cancelled and never rescheduled. The agenda consists of minutes of the last meeting; matters arising; dormant accounts funding; cultural awareness; any other business; and the date for the next meeting. Every issue that is brought up, disputed or debated is left until the next meeting. No business is conducted at all.

I am from Wexford and only last month, for the first time ever, I had the chief executive of Wexford County Council visit the Marshmeadows site, with which Ms Connors is familiar. We went through all the issues at that particular site. The chief executive involved, Mr. Eddie Taaffe, came away with such a different impression of everything after visiting, talking to the people and seeing the issues. While many of the issues were small, they were being ignored for years. While I appreciate what Ms Connors is saying about the LTACC, the sooner we get the officials dealing face to face across the country with people on the ground, the sooner we will make progress in many areas.

There are issues of racism, a lack of maintenance and stuff like that. While they might appear like small issues in some ways, there was a huge infestation of rats in Marshmeadows a few years ago. I kicked up all over the place and I got everyone to start shouting about it. I asked for the Department of the environment, which deals with this issue in Wexford, and it caused a lot of fuss. A fella came out with a paint bucket with polish or something. I am not sure what it was. He had a stick and he scattered a bit here and a bit there, and that was it. He told me it was all done and finished.

There was also an awful flood at Marshmeadows a few years ago.

People were brought out of it in boats. Their cars floated down along it and so the whole town because-----

The River Barrow burst its banks.

One woman went in to give birth to a baby. When she came out, she could not go back into the site. They gave her a temporary house until they could accommodate her. That child is now 12 years old. She is still in the temporary two-bedroom house with herself, her husband and three children. There are all these plans telling her to go to the estate agents, look for houses, price houses, go and look at land, go and do this and do that. I ran around with her. It was all a waste of time. I went in supporting Travellers with issues into the council. It would suggest something, but I would say that is not what they need and that is not what they are looking for. The council would tell me, "Mary, you know what they want but we know what they need. We are county council. We have been doing this for years. We know all about this." I will shut up now.

I am conscious of the time for each member. I ask Ms Connors Aldridge to be very brief.

That is an example from Wexford. In relation to Waterford, it is interesting that we see similar issues. The TAP in Waterford identified a need for 158 units in the previous TAP. Despite numbers being identified, the plan only spoke to the intention to provide for 33 units, which in itself is a flawed system because the TAP is meant to identify the need and then also create a plan to meet that need. Coming back to the point that Senator O'Reilly started with, in Waterford there has only been a delivery of five units in the previous TAP. Again, that is from a much larger figure of need.

The other issue, which brings it back to the point of the need for that independent authority, is there is no accountability for the continual failure to reach on these. Every TAP has said it. There is a higher number identified and a smaller target. That is allowed, but then there is no reach on that smaller target. The other piece is that there is quite an inconsistency of practice. In Waterford, we do not have the Traveller liaison officer because it is only a one-year contract and there were recruitment issues. Around the country, other people have longer term contracts in place. There is an inconsistency in practice. That is why the authority would be important to oversee consistency.

I do not propose to take any more time, but that is a very central issue. It is good to get one good question in. I have to leave now.

I thank the Senator. His point was well made. I call Deputy Quinlivan.

I thank everyone for their contributions and the opening statements that we got before we arrived. Mr. Collins mentioned Dunsink Lane. A number of us visited it in late May. I have been on a lot of Traveller sites, other sites and places across Ireland. I have never seen anything like the dumping of rubbish since I was in Mumbai in India in the 1990s. It is an absolute scandal what is going on there. Some of the local Travellers said that some of the rubbish was dumped by Travellers, but the bulk of it is not being dumped by Travellers. We can clearly see that commercial dumping is taking place there as well. The committee wrote to both Fingal County Council and Dublin City Council to try to clean it up as a matter of urgency. I do not know what has been done there as I do not live in the area. I have not been to the area since. Hopefully, something will be done there.

We could sit here for years. The witnesses have been coming in. I am frustrated and I am not even on this committee a year. I am deeply frustrated about the lack of stuff that we are getting done. I can try to imagine the frustration that the witnesses have coming in here for years. The story that Ms Connors told while shocking, is not surprising to us. We have heard it ourselves before. We all have Traveller sites in our own areas. While we might visit Traveller sites, I would love to visit a Traveller site that was a model Traveller site because I do not know if there is one. I do not know if there is one we can go to where there is no overcrowding. I do not know if there is one we can go to where people are living in conditions that people would like to live in as opposed to have to live in.

The call for a national independent agency is a no-brainer. I was on a local authority for seven years. I have been on the Traveller committee for seven years. I echo exactly what Ms Connors said. Nothing was done with it. It hardly ever met. It was not for the want of one or two of us trying to have that done. It never functioned properly when I was on it. It was deeply frustrating. Even though we were probably one of the better councils, I assume that others were way worse, and some might have been better as well. There are demonstrations and stuff. I am very loath to take away powers from local authorities. However, when they clearly do not deliver, there is no other option. They have left themselves in this situation. It is not a case that they might get better next year because they have been asked for this year on year and nothing has happened.

I have some questions. The answers the witnesses gave to Senator O'Reilly have answered some of what I was going to ask. Clearly, a national independent agency needs to be established. Mr. Joyce referenced the concerns around the housing and residential tenancies Bill. Mr. Collins referenced it as well. They have concerns about residency and moving through counties. What do the witnesses see a national independent agency doing with delivery targets, outcomes and so on? What can we do to progress the Traveller loan scheme? That is a significant thing we can do quicker than most other stuff we can do.

I think there are three questions. I do not want to repeat what was said earlier on the national housing authority, but without delivery there is a need for an oversight body and governance. As somebody who is on the programme board along with Ms Maria Joyce, we are looking at possibly governance, oversight and change. That is required because we cannot continue with a system that is systematically failing people and failing them in a way that their lives are not being improved. Accommodation is the most significant and one of the most important issues for Travellers in Ireland. I wanted to highlight that point first and highlight-----

I apologise for interrupting. I missed the very last bit, which Mr. Joyce said is the most important bit-----

It is probably one of the important issues for Travellers in Ireland along with many other issues. Not having adequate, safe, culturally appropriate provision of accommodation affects the social determinants in education, health, well-being and all the other aspects that have an impact.

Regarding Finglas and Ballyfermot, what we are also looking at is a national crisis point. As a national crisis point, it needs a national response. It needs an adequate response and a commitment to change, reform and oversight to delivery. That is the proposal being put forward by the expert report on Traveller accommodation. That is the proposal that we are all collectively calling for, both nationally and locally for the change required. We are not saying that we have the operational element of it, but it is important that is what is required in terms of the oversight and the relationship with local authorities. It is about adding expertise to the local authorities. It is about adding a value and expertise. It is not working in silos. It has to work in terms of national policy, specifically related to Travellers.

The second question the Deputy had related to-----

The Traveller loan scheme.

Sorry?

The Traveller loan scheme.

I will pass that over to my colleagues.

Does the Deputy mean the trailer loan scheme?

Yes. I apologise.

A Traveller loan scheme. We are not for hire.

That was a big mistake.

That is the World Cup affecting him.

I was watching it too late last night, in fairness.

I am no longer a member of the national Traveller accommodation consultative committee, NTACC, but my colleague Mr. John Paul Collins is. Ms Joyce and Mr. Joyce who are still are members might be better placed to speak about that. My initial observation on it is the principle is an important one that we would have an initiative or a scheme that would facilitate Travellers who want to buy trailers. I call them a "trailer". I do not use the word "caravan". The terms and conditions need to be fair. It needs to be accessible and not punitive in terms of payback. I am very conscious of people who might on low incomes or even unemployed.

It is a scheme that needs to be constantly under review and monitored to see how it can be expanded and made more accessible and affordable for those who want to buy a trailer. Not every Traveller wants to buy a trailer, so we need a parallel scheme where people can rent a trailer as well. It is really important to have that option. And then of course-----

I am sorry for cutting across, but could I ask a question in relation to the Traveller loan scheme?

I was just going to ask a follow-up question. Would Mr. Collins be anticipating that somebody who rents them will hope to get a local authority place, then? Would that be the idea?

Yes. I do not think if you access the loan scheme to buy a trailer, or the rent scheme to rent a trailer, that should preclude you, in and of itself, from having standard housing in the long term if you want that.

I agree 100%.

If I could just ask a question about the Traveller loan scheme - Deputy Quinlivan and I have discussed this - do you not think it is grossly unfair that a social housing applicant, for instance, would be asked to purchase the accommodation they are going to live in?

Yes.

No other social housing applicant outside the Traveller community would be asked to purchase their social house. Why should a Traveller be asked under a Traveller loan scheme? In many respects, they are purchasing second-hand rubbish.

It should not be compulsory. I am just saying it is an option. That is why the rent scheme parallel to it is absolutely crucial. Also, there is a third element to it which is also crucial. I think the terminology is the emergency scheme. In the event of fire damage or a storm, if a trailer is damaged, there is another scheme, an emergency response scheme.

I absolutely agree that Travellers who are in need of good quality, high-standard trailers and mobile homes should not have to be taking out excessive loans to be able to have decent standards.

It is an equality issue.

Exactly. Those issues were raised time and time again with the Department, in the pilot phase of this caravan loan scheme and in the development of what is there now. Traveller organisations at local and national level put in key issues and key concerns, that being one of them, from many of the local Traveller organisations, asking why Travellers should be burdened with these kinds of loans at local level. The other piece to this is that it is under-resourced. There is huge demand for what resource is there. That is people who are desperate to have as high a standard as possible. The Cathaoirleach is also right, however. What local authorities are doing now, despite the fact that it was not part of the condition of the scheme, is that they are reducing the amounts of the loan, which reduces the quality of the mobile, which was not to standard or in line with UK standards even at its height. It is now reducing the amount of the loan to individual families so that they can say they can do it with six families versus three families. That brings down the standard of what is being purchased to begin with.

One of the conditions in the current scheme is that if a family is on a housing list and on a halting site and apply for a loan, the local authority can then deem them being appropriately accommodated and take them off the housing list.

I just want to come in on that point. It is very important. Are there any figures for people who avail of the loan progressing on to a local authority house or accommodation?

We do not have those statistics yet. That is why it will be really important to have independent evaluation of this scheme, that it does not stay static and that it moves. Getting those statistics will be really important. Some local authorities, in fairness to them, have said they will not remove a family from the local authority housing list if they avail of and qualify for a loan.

The concern would be that they are deemed appropriately housed and the local authority is not even looking at their place. They could be there in the bottom of a list, for want of a better phrase.

Yes. What we are also seeing and will have to address with the Department is that in some areas there is higher demand than in others. If there is budget left over in some places, if other local authorities require or request additional funding, my sense of some of what is coming back from the ground is that they are being told "No", or they are being asked to give a rationale as to why they want more. The flexibility that is required is not there. However, the principal point of people having to pay for a decent trailer or mobile home for their family is still apparent, particularly in the context of the continued failed policy.

On the face-to-face piece and the idea that if people go out and see the conditions, something will happen, I hate to disabuse the committee of this notion but it has been done time and again. The reality is that we have State policy that is supposed to be implemented by the agencies of the State, which in this instance are local authorities. They know the conditions that people are living in. They know the substandard accommodation. They know the lack of build and they are still not addressing the issues. It is not about face to face, we are past that. It is about implementation of policy. We are far beyond that notion of face to face.

Ms Joyce covered quite a few of the points I was hoping to make, particularly on the limitations of the budget. Just again as an example, in Waterford in 2025 there was delivery of six of the Traveller loan schemes. If my memory is correct, the demand was for 27. It is a low number. It is great for those families that did get it. Originally, the allocation to Waterford at the beginning of the year was only two. My understanding is that there was a hard fight fought for those additional loans and a lot of rationale had to be given. It is still a very limited response. To meet the criteria for a Traveller loan scheme, you actually have to have a bay and an official site. No new sites are being built, particularly in Waterford. There is massive overcrowding. That is okay for the families that are already there. Most of the time it is replacing a previous trailer that is in very bad condition. However, it is not actually a viable solution for the emerging need, for people who are in homeless situations or overcrowding. Even if the money were there, even if the option was for 50 trailers, there are no bays available to put a trailer on. Actually, that option does not exist in County Waterford.

I agree with everything my colleagues have said. It was interesting to hear that statistic from Waterford because we do not actually have a national picture of the demand for the trailer loan scheme. We see the outputs but we do not see exactly how many people are on a waiting list or whether there is a waiting list. My sense anecdotally from talking to local organisations is that the practice can be quite different in different local authority areas. For example, somebody might present seeking a caravan loan and be told that the quota is full and the local authority will take an application next year, but that demand is never necessarily captured, if that makes sense. We do not actually know what the demand is. When we look at it county by county, one of the problems that some counties face is that a single caravan loan, a €40,000 allocation, is equivalent to one unit. An entire local authority area can be limited in some instances to one unit. I do not have the figures in front of me - apologies - but we can also see from figures that were presented to the NTACC that there are some local authorities that did not deliver caravan loans last year. Their budgets would be reallocated to local authorities that were doing better. There have to be questions asked as to why some local authorities are not delivering on that. I acknowledge that there was a report issued by this committee in the previous Dáil in terms of the caravan loan. I am conscious that there was a piece of work done on that.

I will make one final point on the caravan loan. We are hearing back from families that when they go into a supplier, there are limited numbers of suppliers by local authorities. It is not the case that a family can go to any supplier. What we are finding with some of the suppliers is that once they know that the person is in with a caravan loan scheme, they are directing them to lesser quality ones. Unless some of the individuals insist on a new one or a higher standard, they are being directed or being told by the limited number of suppliers. There is no openness where they can go anywhere, even within the EU. Those restrictions are building the profits of the suppliers while still keeping the Travellers themselves in poor conditions.

Because it is a loan, they are also looking at the fact that they will be tied in too and could have their credit rating impacted if they cannot make repayments.

In relation to Ms Joyce's point about meeting face to face, the issue of the Traveller loan scheme was highlighted to me by the women I met in Marshmeadows face to face when we discussed the issue, so it does have an impact.

I am not taking away from that important job - that engagement piece.

Ms Joyce is quite clear in what she is saying. We go there and think things are going to be done.

No. It is not us we need to be bringing along. It is more the senior officials and decision-makers who are there with us.

One hundred per cent.

We all have an influence in decision-making on this committee as some of our members belong to Government parties.

Mr. Collins spoke about the Third World health conditions there can be on site. For example, in 2022, there was an outbreak of hepatitis B on a site in Ballyfermot. Just last week, there was an outbreak of a disease on site that was caused by rats. One young man ended up in St. James's Hospital for a week and a half in high dependency. They could not make out what was wrong with this young man. His eyes went red, his skin went as yellow as anything, and by the end of it they figured out it was a disease caused by rats. Local authorities around the country do not take responsibility, as Ms Connors rightly said. When some of the areas have rats in them, they come out. Last week, I spent nearly every single day trying to contact Dublin City Council to remove rubbish from Labre Park. It took waste management three days to get back to me. If I was any other Senator, I can promise the Cathaoirleach they would have written back to me within hours.

Ms Joyce spoke about the community being tired. It is exhausting. We have the expert report of 2019, and some of the recommendations that were brought in front of the committee today, as Ms Joyce rightly said, are recommendations that were brought forward to us previously. Absolutely nothing has changed since 2019, except more reports that are not getting acted upon.

Mr. Joyce said there were 96 new builds for Traveller accommodation. I would like to hear more about that because we had Dublin City Council before the committee only a few weeks ago and it did not have any new builds. They redeveloped some bays and different halting sites all right, but they said they had no new builds. I am wondering where those 96 new builds were and were they under local authorities.

The TAP programmes are not working. They will not work. The community has been looking for a stand-alone independent agency since 2019 and beforehand. That is nowhere in sight. The TAP programmes are a waste of money as well. It is a waste of time. It is a talking shop. As Ms Connors said about the agenda, very little gets done. I mean no disrespect to anyone who sits on them. I myself sat on one of them for many a year. If anything, it can divide and conquer in small communities, such as Labre Park. I will keep the focus on Labre Park because it is the site that I know best. I am not pretending I represent 40,000 Travellers but I am doing my best.

On new builds, I spoke a little about the sickness and sites that the council does not take responsibility for. In 2020, we had the No End in Site report done by the Ombudsman for Children. Very few of the recommendations that the ombudsman put forward for that particular halting site in County Cork have been met.

I would like to know the witnesses' views as professionals on the following. Many members of our community would say they are trying to force Travellers out of halting sites and get rid of every halting site in the country, including Dunsink Lane, sites in Finglas, St. Margaret's and Labre Park. What is their opinion on that and what can we do?

No more than people around the table right in front of me and people I have worked with since I was a child, I have been looking for these changes and looking for a better quality of life for our community and, time after time, it is failure by the State. When we talk about it not being the Government's responsibility and it being the local authorities' responsibility, it is the Government's. There is a Department for local authorities, underneath the Department of housing. That Department also has a responsibility for Traveller accommodation and it does not act on that. For me, it is that lack of accountability because the funding is there. The community is active.

Every day I deal with a crisis in my office. Every day crisis after crisis comes in. You would need at least 20 of me to get halfway through the demand and the desperate need of our community and absolutely nothing is getting done about it. There is no one to ensure accountability.

On those 96 builds Mr. Joyce spoke about, I would be interested to hear more. What we can do? Twelve years ago when my father was dying, we got a new kitchen in the house - I will never forget it - and the pipes burst. I telephoned what was then Dublin Corporation's emergency service only to be told it could not help me and that I had to telephone the service for the Travellers. I remember thinking, "Jesus, like", but it is still like that today. If you telephone Dublin City Council, and I am talking for Labre Park as it is the site I know best, they say that they will put me through to the Traveller sector. You are getting someone on the line who is not a member of the Traveller community who does not understand the levels of inequality that Travellers go through when it comes to sustainable accommodation. Now we have Travellers in halting sites who live in dire accommodation, but just because they are in a house does not mean it is fit for purpose. One of the things I dread most in this committee are the conversations on accommodation because they are the hardest to battle. I will not be giving any local authority credit for doing its job. I will not be giving local authorities credit for leaving our community down, time after time, and thinking that it is okay, they are only the Travellers and it is fine.

On waste management, that budget comes from the Traveller accommodation budget. Where else would you get it? Does waste management in settled accommodation come from the settled budget just for housing? At the time of the electricity crisis, when people were awarded money, thousands of Travellers missed out on that. The inequalities are through the roof.

I will let the guests come in now. I am very interested in those 96 new builds Mr. Joyce referred to.

I will start and pass over to Mr. O'Donnell. I thank Senator Flynn. I think we are all of the same opinion and view. I do not want to remind anybody how long I have been involved but I can tell you it has been 30 or 35 years. My passion and drive is around Traveller accommodation. As somebody who has grown up on the side of the road, not actually on a site, and probably did not have electricity until into teenage years, I would know some of the representatives, particularly Deputy Ellis, from that area. We had been evicted so many times by Dublin Corporation prior to it becoming Dublin City Council solely for wanting to live on the roadside and in our camps. That was always a bit of a challenge. When we did get evicted, we were evicted into substandard poor accommodation, without electricity, without water and without sanitation, and we were left to fend for ourselves. I never had much confidence at that time. Therefore, in some ways it is about trying to change the narrative, change the perspective and change the way that things can be done.

I honestly believe there are opportunities to bring about change.

For that reason, I am hopeful, in terms of going forward, that we can work toward change and ensure that our community can have the provision of culturally appropriate accommodation on this island. The reason I say that is because, in terms of formal recognition in 2017, it was symbolic and important. However, it has to be meaningful and has to create a want in terms of change.

I was wondering about the 96-----

I am coming back to that in terms of the stats and the figures. I tried to highlight the importance of that for all of us. In terms of the figures, Mr. O'Donnell will run through that for us.

Earlier on, we were asked about the 96 new units. Those figures come through parliamentary questions. There is a breakdown of how many of those are group houses, how many are halting site-based and how many are acquisitions. They are all new units. During the Traveller accommodation programme from 2019 to 2024, initially what was reported was outputs, which is 774 outputs. It is an interesting question because it raises the issue. Up until fairly recently, there was a need for Traveller organisations to pull information through parliamentary questions because of the issue we have raised that there is no centralised report. The need to know how many units are being delivered at a local and national level initially was coming through parliamentary questions. What is interesting now is that we can see. In 2025, we received a report through the national Traveller accommodation consultative committee. We are one and a half years into the 2025-2029 Traveller accommodation programme. We can see that we are already failing to deliver on group houses. There was a national target of 57 new units for group houses in 2025, and only 26 new units were delivered.

Local authorities have appeared before the committee. I believe Mr. O'Donnell's information. However, I do not see on the ground. All the local authorities I have questioned have had no new builds. I am sorry, Chair, if I am talking out of turn; please let me know. They came in here a few weeks ago. It is on the record. They said they did so many builds. I replied asking whether that was just them doing up the base that was there and they said yes and that they did not have new builds. Does Mr. O'Donnell believe, as a national accommodation worker, that those stats are accurate? Is he sure? Even though that is very little to us, it seems like a lack that I did not know about it, not that I am important to know about it, but it seems like some work is getting done, but I do not buy it.

I will respond to that. It might sound like a large figure in that context, and I do hear that. I was not out delivering the buildings myself, to be clear. This is over a five-year period. This is 96 new units. That is not even one unit per local authority per year. It is about putting that in context. When the Senator says 96 units, it might sound like a large number in a national context, but over a five-year period, it is a small figure. That would be my take on that. Part of the issue that this raises is the lack of alignment we mentioned in our opening statement between Traveller accommodation programmes and a wide range of other housing policies. For example, just to name the regional homeless action plans as a particular example, we know from lots of research that Travellers are disproportionately impacted by homelessness in both overcrowding in terms of being invisible and hidden homeless but also living in emergency accommodation and residential emergency.

If I am not mistaken, there are five regional homeless action plans across the country. The Dublin region, where we can all reasonably expect there to be quite a high level of Traveller homelessness, makes a very cursory reference to the Traveller accommodation programme and has absolutely no targets or specific provision to address Traveller homelessness as distinct from any other kind of homelessness. It names the Traveller accommodation programme and takes no further action. The same can be said of the south east. It names a number of policies, NTRIS II and so on, but does not take any action to address Traveller homelessness, despite the distinct issues and needs in relation to homelessness that affect the Traveller community. The same can be said for the south west. That is an example of a lack of alignment. These two housing strategies are not talking to one another, do not have a particular relationship to one another and are not accountable to one another. In fact, the people managing one of them over here have no particular relationship or knowledge of what is going on in another strategy over there. The same can be said for the housing delivery action plans. We included the breakdown in our submission-----

That is why we need the identifier as well because some Departments will say mass when it comes to questions to answers in the Dáil. Some of them would do novenas and the whole shebang. I would love more specific-----

In relation to the ethnic identifier, the State has recently launched its EU equality data strategy. The importance of a mechanism in terms of the gathering of ethnic data from a human rights perspective is critical in all of this. I could hear my own head whirring when Mr. O'Donnell was talking about statistics and figures. The Housing Agency publishes statistics annually in relation to the housing needs assessment list and forms. In either its 2024 or 2025 report - I could stand corrected - the Housing Agency statistics show that Dublin City Council only identified just over 40 families. That in itself is a stark inaccuracy. Since the ethnic identifier got introduced, it only showed over 40 families last year. South Dublin's Traveller question, which is not done from a human rights perspective in the housing needs assessment, but it does ask the question, showed that there were over 500 Traveller families, significantly up from previously where it was not asked. We have always said that the question needs to be asked under a human rights framework in the way that it is asked in the census. It is a wider question. It is critical in terms of it. The reality as well is it is going to tell us what we already know in some ways. The reality is that because they are not delivering, we know all these statistics are out there, whether through the data or anecdotally. It is not going to tell us anything new. It will probably just put that figure on it. Does it mean that it will change anything?

If things stay the way they are with the local authorities gifted with the delivery, it will change nothing. We talked about what a national authority would look like. There are findings in that review of the report that would shape that. Models can be looked at. Those other agencies that were established, whether on roads or environment or water, did not just magically come out of the air. Processes were put in place to make them happen. That is all we are asking for in terms of that. We are producing a report under the programme board, which was tasked with the implementation of those recommendations contained within the review of the Act that will look at national structures. That needs to be done once that paper is produced. We talk about the operational, but it should look at the existing barriers that are there. It should look at the reasons local authorities put in targets for Traveller-specific build but then say they do not have the land when they have the land to do other things with. All of those barriers that they constantly use need to be addressed within that space.

I will come back to Senator Flynn's two points. I thank her for raising them. She had a question on whether councils are trying to push Travellers out of Traveller accommodation. I will speak to Waterford, because that is what I know. In the Waterford TAP, the report states that there was no request for Traveller-specific accommodation, but the reality is that because there is no progress on sites and no identified land and, historically, families are waiting 40 years-plus for Kilbarry and other sites to be developed, when a Traveller goes in to put down the application for what they are asking for, even though they may want to assert their right as a Traveller to culturally appropriate housing, they are disillusioned and not going to choose the option because, ultimately, if you have a young family or want a roof over your head, you are going to go with what you think is the most viable option. Travellers may want to live culturally appropriately, but they are choosing to register for standard housing as their first priority because they feel this is the only practical option.

The new build figure is a good question. Statistically in Waterford, we have statistics that five new units were delivered. Again, that was the Green Road site and that was already for a family that was already in situ and it was only a redevelopment. It is an important point.

I thank the witnesses very much for the introductions and their contributions. I hear the frustration very clearly because I feel it myself. I have been at this for so long now, particularly since I was elected in 1999 - which is 27 years ago - and I have been dealing with Dunsink Lane, St. Margaret's and you name it over the years. I agree with one thing, that we need a national, independent agency of some description to oversee the local authorities. It is quite clear that local authorities vary. They have their own ways of doing things and some of them do absolutely nothing. That has to be addressed and someone has to put their foot on it and say these things need to be done.

The witnesses referenced how in 2025 there were only 26 new Traveller accommodation units completed nationally but we have not done an audit of what was lost. If we look at Traveller sites, we lost about ten to 13 units in St. Joseph's. We have now lost ten units in St. Margaret's, for whatever reason, but the point is they are now blocked up and will be for the foreseeable future. We are losing accommodation. There has to be a plan to deal with that. You cannot just board up places, walk away and leave it like that. That is the problem we find with Dublin City Council.

When it comes to the caravan loans, Dublin City Council is doing about seven or eight of them this year for the whole of Dublin City Council. That is the money it got and that is what it is saying. I agree that it is absolutely appalling that people have to pay for their own accommodation. It is supposed to be local authorities. That whole situation needs to be looked at.

People who require trailers are medically assessed as well. I have people in my own constituency whose trailers are just inadequate but because they got them five years ago there is a whole attitude of, "You got one five years ago. You are not going to get one for another five or ten years." That is not good enough. Situations have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis and cases vary. People get sick and things happen. That is very frustrating.

I made representations to Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council in regard to both Dunsink Lane and what accommodation will be made available, what will happen and why are the people not being consulted. I have gone to all of them in regards to this, and the amazing thing is, there is very little contact between Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council. There is the crossover in Dunsink lane. The likes of St. Joseph's and St. Mary's is managed by Dublin City Council but is located on Fingal lands, and that is a big problem. That is why someone overseeing this is more important in order to have some sort of an authority because that communication is not working and they do not seem to interact very well. That is my experience with them.

I have lost count of the number of meetings I went to over at St. Margaret's, Avila and St. Joseph's and we were promised these sites would all be done, as happened with Labre Park and all of that, but there has been nothing. It just seems to disappear over a period of time. Personnel change and then all of a sudden the whole thing has changed. That is not good enough; there has to be continuity. It has to be done properly that if you go out there, consult people and make a commitment you have to deliver and they are not delivering in a proper fashion.

Delivery is the issue, really. There are so many agencies and people doing some tremendous work, but on the ground there is no delivery. We are not getting the delivery and that is very worrying. I have been coming to meetings like this over the past number of years and I keep coming out of them with the same attitude of what did we achieve? What have we got? Accommodation is essential. It has to be dealt with. The overcrowding in St. Margaret's and Avila has not been addressed and it is just appalling.

I have a question about the fuel allowance. Are people being refused the fuel allowance because they are using caravans and so on? I am curious as to the answer to that if someone could give me an answer because people contacted me about the fuel allowance. I wanted to find out in the case of people who were entitled to fuel allowance for various reasons, if they are on certain incomes etc., if their accommodation is being taken into account?

There is no doubt Traveller families have been pushed out of accommodation that is ethnic to them. That should not happen but it is happening, where people are being forced to get HAP and go into local authority housing, and that to me is wrong. We need to keep people together. We need to try our best. There obviously will be people who will not want that, but in my opinion it is not being addressed. People should be able to stay locally and there should be enough accommodation provided. It is not due to a shortage of land.

The other worry I have always had is that a lot of the accommodation has been put in the wrong places, such as Dunsink dump, Labre and all of these places. Some of them are old dumps. There is a total disregard for the community. It is absolutely crazy.

What is the main opposition to the idea of a national independent agency? What about the Minister? What have the witnesses found themselves? Why are they so resistant to this? I will leave it at that.

In the Deputy's first question he brought back the idea of the national agency in terms of why there was so much resistance and everything else. I want to restate that the programme board is actually now looking at this and we are hopeful to see a paper presented possibly showing different models of what this could transpire to look like. We hope that, by the end of the year, we will be able to see some of this come to the surface.

From our position it is about recognising the current systems are not working and are actually nearly designed to systematically fail Travellers in terms of provision of culturally appropriate accommodation, whether that is in Dublin, which has the largest population of Travellers in the whole country, or whether it is by people being coerced into housing with no possibility of ever seeing the provision of Traveller accommodation.

While the provision of accommodation limited is terms of units, a really valid point the Deputy made is about the closure of existing provision of accommodation. We know that in parts of Dublin such as Guinness's, Ringsend and other areas, units are now being closed slowly and, in some cases, quite immediately. We can see all of those steps taking place. The Deputy can have a look at our submission where it states that a percentage of Travellers are being moved into houses, not Traveller-specific accommodation. What is happening is, and Mary Connors Aldridge from Waterford indicated this, when you are looking for the provision of accommodation there is an assessment carried out in terms of an ethnic identifier, the vast majority of Travellers are being told, more or less, that if they are looking for Traveller accommodation, it is not being built and it is not coming on stream.

In our submission members can see there is a breakdown of figures. To remind other members, for example, for the period 2016 to 2030, the document shows units of accommodation provided in Mayo is zero, units of accommodation provided in Leitrim is zero, units of accommodation provided in Carlow is zero, units of accommodation provided in Laois is zero, units of accommodation provided in Longford is zero, units of accommodation provided in Offaly is zero, and units of accommodation provided in Westmeath is zero. What we are looking at shows there is no plan to provide Traveller accommodation. Looking at Finglas, from 2016 to 2030 they are planning to provide seven units. Those seven units are then crossed over from 2023 to 2024. The reality around refurbishments is that some of the units in Kerry will be refurbishments since 2016. It is really important that there is work in terms of a mapping exercise looking at the provision of accommodation showing what is there now to what is not now in place.

Also, what we are losing. We need to see all that.

Exactly. We are losing stock.

It may be the case I am a lone voice on this issue, and if I am, that is well and good. In terms of the trailer loan scheme, it was negotiated at the National Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee. We had certain positions and pushed them as far as we could. We did not get everything we looked for and it was very much a compromise. I acknowledge it is not perfect and that in many respects it is inadequate in terms of the amount of funding, the restrictive list of suppliers and the quality of the trailers. However, from a conceptual and principled point of view, it is important that Travellers have that choice. I know Travellers who would rather own a trailer than rent a trailer. That option should be there running parallel to the rent scheme. It would be wrong if any local authority made it compulsory that you could only avail of the loan scheme and not the rent scheme. That would be a problem. I am not aware of that happening but maybe my colleagues are.

To go back to the points raised by Deputy Ellis, he is absolutely spot on and we have noticed over the years that there has been a decommissioning of hard-fought-for sites over the years. I can mention a few of them. Ashline, Ennis, County Clare was a seven-unit group housing scheme that was decommissioned because there was some feuding on the site, which could have been resolved and dealt with differently. Housing estates are not decommissioned in the settled community when there is feuding, so why do it for Traveller sites? We had the decommissioning of the site behind Guinness up here, where the Maughans and the Collins were staying for years. We had the decommissioning of Pigeon Lane in Ringsend. The Deputy is right that St. Joseph's has been partially decommissioned, as has Bill Shelley Park, which was a ten-unit group housing scheme. The Deputy is absolutely right. There seems to be an insidious policy of making things so difficult that they arrive at the stage where they decommission sites. We are not just talking about the provision of additional sites, but also about protecting hard-fought-for sites over the years. I think Deputy Ellis is spot on.

That is why I am very concerned, as my colleagues are, about Dunsink and the master plan for Dunsink. Travellers have been living there since 1972 and it is to be hoped we may talk about this next Wednesday night. There is a real fear in the community that this master plan for the area will essentially displace them, which would be a type of ethnic cleansing. It was okay for us to live beside the dump there for over 30 years when there was even speculation about toxic waste being dumped into it. Deputy Ellis knows there has been research that cancer rates in that area were higher than in other parts of Finglas. Now that the dump is decommissioned, it is prime development land, and there is a real concern that we will be forced out. That is why it is really important we are very vigilant to ensure that does not happen.

There has been no consultation and no dialogue whatsoever at this point with the Travellers in the area. I know Deputy Ellis wrote directly to Fingal County Council about that, which we appreciate. However, there is a horse project there. I know the people who run it and they do a really good job. I have spoken to them and they have obviously had some communication from Fingal County Council because it is on the public record that their needs around stabling for the horses will be taken care of. It is only right and proper that the horses will have stabling. Yet, ironically, there has been no direct reassurance or communication from Fingal County Council to the residents who have been there since 1972. That is absolutely disgusting.

Not to say they are not there, but I am not aware of any issues around fuel allowances being denied. However, I am aware, as my sister and other Travellers have spoken about, that if someone has a daughter or son living in a trailer in the backyard because they have nowhere to go, then the whole income is seen as one. It is means tested even though they are different families but living in the same space. The amount of rent is decided on that basis and that might affect the fuel allowance.

The main tenant.

It may, but I am not aware of it.

I just have a couple of points. I will not go back over the points Deputy Ellis has made and which Mr. Colllins has picked up on, and how, effectively, he outlined what is being lost in halting sites and bays and their decommissioning of them. We have seen halting sites around the country, and two of the three halting sites in County Meath go into refurbishment phases but then became rebuilds into group housing. I am not saying that should not happen. If families want to live in a group housing scheme, that is really important. However, there are now two halting sites lost in Meath.

When we look at the battles that took place to get the land designated, I was very involved, going back many a summer and many a year, trying to get the Trim halting site. We had to make two or three attempts to make the case with the local authority to get the land designated. It was only when Joe Horan, the county manager at the time, turned around the day after it was refused the second time and declared emergency provision to be put into the field where the families were living. They went in the following day with hard stands and temporary toilets. Because that temporary side was right beside the house of one of the most objectionable councillors, who the far-right would not hold a candle to when it came to views on Travellers, he did not rally the way he did previously when we proposed it again across the road, because it would have been further from his place. That is the kind of politics that creates these problems.

We will have a paper from the programme board but we do not know what is going to be in that yet. As organisations, national and local, that fed into it and called very clearly for a national authority, we hope it will be one of the recommendations. However, then we will be landed with the same thing again. We will have a document saying what is needed, in the same way we have policies, but no implementation if you do not have the political will and do not prioritise Traveller accommodation. Regarding what Mr. Collins said, I am gobsmacked by this refurbishment of the Dunsink area. They will engage with the project around horses, which I am not saying is not important, but they will not engage with Traveller organisations and families - human life - who have lived in appalling circumstances beside a dump.

On the fuel allowance, I have not heard of any situations where people were denied it, but National Traveller MABS did a really good report a couple of years ago on the cost of living and fuel allowance. The fuel allowance for living in a trailer is the exact same amount as if you were living in a installed house, without any allowance for the fact that there is no insulation in trailers and mobile homes. The cost of keeping them heated in the winter far exceeds the fuel allowance and far exceeds what it would cost in an ordinary house.

One final point of correction, there was a lot of input and submissions from Traveller organisations when the current caravan loan scheme was being developed. We actually did try to engage with the Minister and the NTACC and listed conditions, and he refused a meeting and refused to take on board the concerns we had with it following the launch of the current circular that was on the caravan loan.

Thank you. I am conscious of time. We have two members to come in.

I want to come back to the Act and the 2019 expert review.

Take it that I know little or nothing about the expert review. Were the Travelling community and the witnesses, as representatives of that community, broadly happy with the expert review in the round, in terms of what it recommended?

That is a straightforward question. We in the Irish Traveller Movement have endorsed the 32 recommendations that have been put forward and fully support them. Our part of the work is the implementation of the 32 recommendations, which have been presented here many different times and the committee has had questions about how they are being applied.

One recommendation concerns the national accommodation authority. Others concern the repeal of criminal trespass legislation and the Part 8 public consultation process, which we also felt was contentious in terms of local elected representatives voting on Traveller accommodation, something we are concerned about. We felt a number of areas could be amended and changed, including ensuring the provision of Traveller accommodation in terms of nomadism on the island of Ireland. As a community, we should have the right to exercise our culture in a nomadic way. The key issue is not criminalising that element of Traveller culture. As we are talking about permanent accommodation, it is also important that we ensure Travellers who are nomadic have a right to practise their nomadic way of life on this island.

There were 32 recommendations. How many have been implemented from the community's perspective? What would the sense be?

My sense would be that the most contentious ones are those we are discussing today.

That have not been implemented.

We are certainly not satisfied as of yet about where that is at. One issue is the repeal of criminal trespass legislation in terms of criminalising families who are on private and public lands. That was a civil and is now a criminal matter. We are certainly concerned about that. We are also concerned that there has been no progress on removing Part 8 from local authorities. We spoke about that. While these changes are required, overall governance and oversight needs to be changed because they are designed by failure, in that accommodation is not being provided. There is also the decommissioning and closure of sites and a lack of delivery of accommodation.

We are nowhere close in terms of costs. The current plans are low in ambition and targets. Even if they were to be applied and implemented today, they would not meet the needs of Travellers as set out. That was part of the review of the legislation. The legislation was enacted in 1998 and we welcomed it. However, that legislation was not sufficient to deliver.

I will make one point. There were provisions in the 1998 Act. If local authorities had to implement change, they would have brought about change and made a difference. The review strengthened and moved things forward, but there was plenty of provision in the Act for representatives to deliver meaningful change.

Mr. Joyce touched on three key recommendations, that is, Part 8, the suspension of trespass legislation - we would call for the absolute abolition of trespass legislation - and the national authority. Implementing those recommendations would bring about fundamental change if implemented. Some of the lower hanging fruit probably has been implemented, but it would never make the impact it needed to make. Some of the research elements of the recommendations and the programme board have started. However, we can have research to death. We know what the issues are before the research has concluded. We still do not find recommendations in the research having the impact that is needed.

There is a body of recommendations. Is the programme board representative of the community? The year 2019 is a good while ago. The programme board seems to be charged with progressing the implementation. Is the pace of that board an issue? What is the assessment of the witnesses of the programme board in the round?

During that time we had a number of changes. There was a delay in appointments when a new Government was formed. One of the last appointees in terms of responsibilities was the Minister with responsibility for Traveller accommodation. That appointment did not happen until nine months later. That was a concern we raised many times. All other portfolios had been designated. That is an indication of where the provision of Traveller accommodation lies.

We would indicate that any Minister is the Minister for all of the people, not some of the people. Traveller accommodation is just as important. There is now a housing crisis, but there has been a housing crisis for Travellers over decades. That is indicative of our representation here and of elected representatives. In addition, there have been key recommendations and a change of Minister. Some Ministers have been progressive and engaging, which we welcomed from Damien English and the Ministers that followed.

We are there to give advice, but it is up to the programme board and officials to act in a way that gives credibility to implementation. We have been on other boards. I was on the Legal Aid Board and had a term of two years. That board had a lot of recommendations, but it ceased in terms of its work. The process for the Traveller community process has been unnecessarily prolonged. Ms Joyce, I or anybody else should not be on a committee that is not progressing in the way it should.

As it stands at the moment, Mr. Joyce feels it is reasonably well set up.

We now have a chair, CCM, officials and the national organisations, which includes me, Ms Joyce and representatives of Pavee Point. We are slow. It has not been as progressive as we would like. We would like the recommendations applied and implemented in full and in the spirit in which they were intended. Over time, things have changed.

There has been a new national homeless action plan, new strategies, new pipeline reports, developments, action plans and house and homeless strategies. All of this has been happening during this time without the changes we sought to national policy as it relates to Travellers. We are certainly way behind and slow.

Mr. Collins mentioned the silo effect in his presentation. We are sitting in spaces which are examining Traveller-specific accommodation while also introducing wider policy regarding accommodation, housing and homelessness without embedding the crisis in Traveller accommodation and the stark overrepresentation of Travellers in homeless services.

To be frank, change has not moved at the pace it needs to move with regard to the programme board. It has not examined some of the fundamentals in a real way. We have had presentations from planning on Part 8, and planning laws have changed during the timeframe of the process. Developments of more than 100 units no longer require public consultation. All we are asking for is the suspension of Part 8 in the development of Traveller accommodation. People will tell us it is not used, but it is and there are threats that it will be used. Ms Connors gave a clear example of it.

The suspension of trespass legislation is within the gift of justice.

It is not within the gift of housing, and justice will not come to the table in relation to that. Even when looking to fundamentally address one of the biggest barriers to Traveller nomadism in this country, the crippling of it was the 2002 piece, which was done while we were trying to get the provisions of the Act in place. Again, it is another example where we are here in one space, and a law that could potentially impact us positively or negatively is happening without us.

There needs to be a more joined-up piece. There needs to be political urgency in relation to Traveller accommodation. They are finding ways to address urgent issues in other ways, and they are dealing with that, but they are not dealing with it in the context of Travellers and accommodation.

I will go back to the point on the national agency and what the objection to it is. I think it is purely ideological and political. There might be other reasons but I cannot think of them. They are the two that come to my mind.

In relation to the programme board, and I said this when I was a member of the NTACC, when the independent expert review was first published, it might have made sense to have a separate structure to look at its implementation. However, it is now becoming a bit repetitive with the NTACC. I do not think it is a good use of people's time because they are discussing the very same issues and some of the same personnel are involved. I am thinking of efficiency. There was an agreement that the programme board would disband at some stage and all of the business would then be discussed under the NTACC. We must also bear in mind that the NTACC is a statutory body set up by legal statute, whereas the programme board is not.

I will finish on the next point and I promise I will not say any more. As we speak here today, I am reminded that I came across a recording recently of the late, great Pecker Dunne. He said in that husky voice: "I would never move into a site. They are like concentration camps". I am here today in this very peculiar environment where we are advocating for more sites. It is almost unnatural., to go back to the point I made about nomadism. There are still many Traveller families out there who will not move into a site. They do not want to move into a site. They would rather live on the side of the road. It is ironic and almost peculiar that we are here. It demonstrates what has been taken from us collectively, as a people and as an indigenous minority nomadic group, that we are now forced into this position to be campaigning and advocating for sites, when it is very unnatural in some ways. I am reminded of what Pecker Dunne said, “I would never move into a site. They are like concentration camps.” That mindset is still there.

The structures, be it the NTACC or the programme board, are consultative spaces. Our participation in that as Traveller organisations is in the same way that we participate in Traveller accommodation consultative committees at local level. It is a consultative space. We are sick of being consulted. There is no decision-making. The national authority needs to have decision-making powers that Travellers are central to, so there is meaningful engagement. Consultation is not meaningful if we are still consulting on the same things 30 years later and calling for the one thing to happen.

I accept that 100%. I will make one comment in relation to a national body. What we do not want to do is let the local authorities off the hook. The local authorities should be doing this properly. What is needed is a HIQA-type body. In the health system, HIQA goes in and audits. It effectively names, issues public recommendations and then whichever health body it is has to react and respond, and is obliged under statute to do that. My sense of what the witnesses are saying is that they want the local authorities to do their job properly, but also for the national body to be auditing them and calling them out. If we transfer the powers of the local authorities to another body, we will be a long time getting everything running properly. That is just an observation.

We are not trying to make this process so overcomplicated that it can never be delivered. We are pragmatic in our approach but we are also highlighting that the provision is not coming on stream. It is within the statistics and the numbers. Mr. Collins’s point was about people advocating for accommodation. The reality for some Travellers is they have never had adequate, safe, culturally appropriate accommodation where there is hot water, running water and electricity. It was only during Covid, during a humanitarian crisis and a global pandemic, that people started to get electricity and water and, for the first time, were even meeting the guidelines issued by the HSE.

From this perspective, the NTACC has a function but it has also, in a sense, failed in how it is monitoring, delivering and providing oversight. Therefore, the programme board has a function. I will remain committed to the programme board and the delivery of its recommendations and supports. They will have to look at the relationship between the NTACC and what is required. If they do not, we are just moving around the chairs and repeating the systematic failures. I do not want to be complicit, through the Irish Traveller movement or as an individual, in those structures that are failing our people. I do not think we can stand behind that.

The issue is we need the support. We are here to support this committee and its recommendations in terms of pushing those issues along. That means using its influence to have those recommendations applied and implemented in the spirit that is intended. Whatever influence the committee has, we ask it to use that in the course of its work.

It has been a very interesting conversation. As I have come in last, a lot of what I wanted to ask has already been covered. I have a few questions. One is on the whole inequality piece with regard to accommodation. We know there have been a lot of reports on domestic violence, and on Traveller women or men who are applying for jobs having to use somebody else's address on their applications because they feel they will not be considered if they give their current address. I ask for the witnesses’ comments on that.

Another issue concerns Traveller youth homelessness. I sat on the Traveller committee in our local authority for about ten years. While we worked very closely with the community, I was always conscious of the fact that Traveller homelessness was still very much to the forefront. That Traveller committee in Limerick City and County Council set up a dedicated Traveller accommodation unit. Senator Flynn criticised the fact that it does not work in Dublin. However, the last Traveller accommodation programme report in Limerick referred to 108 families being moved into accommodation and 25 other Traveller families being offered transfers. Are they low figures, in the opinion of the witnesses?

Deputy Ó Muirí referred to a national body and having that whole accountability piece dealt with through a HIQA-type body. I would be interested to hear the comments of the witnesses on that. That is it, in a nutshell.

I thank the Senator for the questions. I might speak to the piece on youth homelessness. A couple of years ago, there was a youth homelessness strategy that concluded in 2025. There were a number of actions in that strategy relating to Travellers that were positive in targeting young Travellers to address youth Traveller homelessness. There is no evidence that most of those actions were implemented. There was an 18-month progress report halfway through the strategy and it indicated very little progress. We are awaiting the finalisation of the report to give an overview of what was implemented and what was not. One of the specific actions related to naming Traveller youth homelessness in the Traveller accommodation programmes. Having done something of a look through many of them, I can say that there is no reference in some of the Traveller accommodation programmes. I cannot say that for every single one. There is possibly a reference in some TAPs, but certainly not in all of them.

That is an example of that strategy not actually being implemented for Travellers. I am not sure if there has been an update on that report.

As far as I am aware, the strategy report has not been completed. Based on the NHAC discussion last week, as regards development of the next one, Traveller youth will be named as one of the priority groups identified. That is something we need to keep an eye on and try to be as strong as possible in informing the processes that will be there.

I might also say that all these inequalities are the everyday lived reality of Travellers in trying to get access. Too many of our young people have to give different addresses or the Gaelic version of their name. They have to deny who they are as Travellers. The impact of that denial of identity on the esteem of young Travellers in particular, just to get access to a job, is beyond harmful. All those inequalities are the everyday lived experience, but they are made worse by what we have talked about here for the past few hours, as well as a month ago at another Oireachtas joint committee. It has been talked about for decades now.

Adding to all this will be the potential additional harm that is going to be there with the housing and residential tenancies Bill. Looking at the potential impact of that, we have concerns, especially in respect of women who might be experiencing gender and domestic-based violence. If they have to go from one county to another and still have to prove habitual residency, that is going to be a significant issue. Women coming out of prison will need to have an address. That will now be a requirement of a housing assessment. One of the proofs of the habitual residency in social welfare requirements was being on the housing list and the housing assessment form. It is now required to prove habitual residency to be able to go on that list. These are the kind of things that will play out within this Bill that is being rushed through.

The other piece that should be of concern is proof of habitual residency for emergency provision. The reason or rationale given for habitual residency was that people who were coming in who were not there a long time could get preference ahead of others who might have been there. We are seeing the ugliness of how that right-wing ideology, which is informing some of this policy context, is being perpetrated and the impact on migrant and immigrant groups in this country. I cannot understand the urgency in getting that in when these provisions are present across other things also. Why is proving habitual residency a requirement when looking to access emergency homeless accommodation? They are never going to be in homeless accommodation on a long-term basis. Everyone's need as they are presented should be addressed. No one who is homeless should have to sleep without a roof over their head if they do not choose to. Provision needs to be made. Putting these barriers in place will further compound all these inequalities in some of this.

I ask for that pause which was called for earlier, and for the committee or any of its members to use any influence they might have with regard to the Bill being rushed through. FLAC, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and a range of independent law centres, who are the ones dealing with the consequences of this inequity in housing and accommodation for those most in need, have identified and put together key concerns and issues and have brought them to the attention of the Minister's office and various committees. I ask members to use any influence they have to try to stop this juggernaut from being ramrodded into legislation - to look at some way of pausing this Bill in order to allow dialogue with the organisations representative of homeless groups and Travellers on accommodation issues to try to inform this and have something that will not have a further detrimental impact on people's lives.

Does Senator Byrne have anything further to add?

No, that is great. Everything else I had in mind to ask has already been covered. I thank the witnesses for what has been a very informative conversation.

I concur with the words of Senator Byrne. This has been a very good meeting in the context of gleaning the information we need to put into our documentation to bring forward the production of a report, which will be something we can act on. We will certainly be taking into account a lot of the information the witnesses have given us on several issues here today.

I thank the witnesses and I hope they found the meeting useful. The committee looks forward to further interaction with them in the near future.