Ireland criticised over Traveller housing but praised for progress on hate crime
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The Council of Europe has strongly criticised Ireland for failing to significantly improve its record on providing accommodation to Travellers.
It said that less than a fifth of last year’s budget allocation had been spent as of July 2021, and over half of local authorities had not drawn down any funding for Traveller accommodation.
The Council’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) did commend Ireland for making “very encouraging steps” in introducing new hate speech and hate crime laws.
The ECRI issued an implementation update on its 2019 report, which had strongly recommended that a solution be found to the issue of failure by local authorities to use funding allocated for Traveller accommodation.
The original report said possibilities include imposing “dissuasive sanctions” for failure to spend allocated funding or removing the responsibility for Traveller accommodation from local authorities and placing it under the authority of a central housing commission.
The implementation update said the ECRI was pleased to note that the Traveller-specific accommodation budget of €14.5m for 2020 was fully spent, but added that this funding had to be used “mostly to address emergency issues” related to the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than to meet Travellers’ long-standing housing needs. It stated:
It said while the funding allocation system has been made more flexible as from 2020, so as to allow any local authority to apply for and draw funds at any time during the year, the ECRI “regrets that little has been done” to address the structural shortcomings in the identification of the housing needs of Travellers and to ensure greater accountability in the use of the Traveller accommodation funds.
“In particular, the implementation of the recommendations set out in the Traveller Accommodation Expert Report 6 of July 2019 has been significantly delayed and the programme board supervising it only met for the first time in March 2021,” it said.
“Moreover, none of the recommendations regarding the increased national oversight of the delivery of Traveller accommodation has been implemented as yet.
The ECRI noted “very encouraging steps” in introducing new hate speech and hate crime legislation, however.
It also welcomed the training of gardaí on hate crime in the framework of the Garda Diversity and Integration Strategy 2019-2021 and the setting-up of an online crime reporting facility in July 2021.