Housing Department to assume control of allocating Traveller accommodation funding
Take Consistently Who Away The Acmodation Darragh Traveller Says From Allocated Local Will Authorities Funding O'brien Now Underspent Department Minister Housing Process For His Have
The Department of Housing will take over the process for allocating funding for Traveller accommodation.
A report launched on Monday by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre, and the Department of Equality found more than 90% of Travellers said there is “insufficient and inadequate” accommodation available, including halting sites.
Minister of Housing Darragh O'Brien says his department will now take the process away from local authorities who have consistently underspent their funding allocated for Traveller accommodation.
"This is not unprecedented, this has been the scenario for many recent years," Mr O'Brien said.
"It's a regular occurrence and that's why myself and my colleague minister Peter Burke are actually changing the process for next year.
"What I wanted to do is the allocation of monies for Traveller accommodation will remain open during the course of the year, so as opposed to just setting targets for each local authorities and some of them who don't deliver, that it would be an open call where local authorities would come in and we would manage the Traveller accommodation process directly with them.
"Some local authorities are regularly underperforming.
"My department wants to ensure that that trend is reversed, that's why we will change the process that we're putting in place from 2021, and I'll be working with Martin (Collins) and other advocacy groups for Traveller accommodation that will make a real difference.
€69m has been left unspent for Traveller accommodation since the year 2000.
Martin Collins from Traveller advocacy group Pavee Point called the underspend "shameful".
The minister says there are "various reasons" for some local authorities' underspend, "some of it is planning reasons, objections, various different things that happen".
"I recognise there is a problem," he added.
"We want to make sure that changes because we need to deliver good quality accommodation for our Travelling community, and I'm going to make sure that happens. How we're going to do that is we're going to change the allocation process so that it will be managed centrally and the local authorities will effectively put forward their plans to myself.
"It needs to happen because if you look at the really poor, desperate quality of some of the accommodation that our Travelling community are living in, that needs to be reversed and we're anxious to do that and that's why in a very short space of time, since taking over as minister, we're actually changing the process to make it easier for drawdowns to happen, and to move forward projects quicker.
"We've put an extra €16m this year into homeless services and because of Covid to keep our homeless community safe, as safe as we can, to nearly over a quarter of a billion being spent."
On homelessness, the minister says coming into winter, no one is being turned away from homeless accommodation, a statement that is disputed by homeless outreach groups.
"Our winter plan is in place, there is bed capacity and additional capacity, every single night," he said.
"No one is being turned away from emergency accommodation. What we need to make sure happens as well as that, is that we keep the exits from homelessness happening — putting people back into permanent accommodation. This year about 4,400 people will exit homelessness, and I'm targeting 6,000 exits next year.
"Our winter plan has been in place since October, it's fully funded there is no issue with resources.