Joe O'Reilly: Fix Traveller Housing for Everyone

Thank you, Chair, and welcome to our guests. I think it's a great exercise that we're focused in on one area in a kind of forensic way, and well done to you, Chair, on inviting your neighbours here, and make sure that he treats you to some hospitality before you go home. Don't let him off without that. But to get to the questions, the third speaker, I think your first name is Mary, from distance. You addressed my first question, in that you raised the CBL issue. Now, the CBL, I know from my clinic work, and the colleagues will probably agree, is working well in a general sense. It's good for a lot of people, but as you say, it's an issue for travellers. Do you want to be a little specific? Should we do it through your professional workers, or what way would you say the County Council should get that fairness into the CBL, that you can use it? That's the letting process. I suppose travellers, say for instance the older generation of travellers, not me or my kids or whatever, but people that are older than me, I think they want that bit of communication rather than looking at a phone. I could be wrong, but my father, for instance, he'd rather go in to see the doctor than talk to you on the phone, or to look at a screen. He's very old school, and travellers are old school. So I think, even if it's once a week for someone to come out, or they go in to have a look, well this is what is available, and then maybe someone to help them, well do you want to bid in this house? Do you know what I mean? Because you have to be very, very careful. Just to get a practical way of dealing with your difficulty points. The thing about it is, say for instance, I'm still in emergency accommodation and I'm looking for a house. If I bid on a house that I'm not going to take, I'm going to be off that choice place letting and be took off for two years. So you have to be very careful. And what about people that don't know how to read and write, and don't know what they're at, and say look I'll chance this anyhow, maybe I don't know what I'm at. And to bid on something maybe that they have no intention of taking, and then be two years gone off the list. You know what I mean? Well maybe we should discuss it another day Chair, in a specific sense. I know the choice place letting was set up initially I think because of the large number of refusals in local authorities. That was the case in Wexford anyway. And it is working well outside of that difficulty. That's my experience, I don't know what the colleagues would say. There's no choice place letting in Limerick. It certainly is in our case, in our office it's working, but I do understand your difficulty and that needs addressing. Two, do you think in Wexford, you speak to Wexford I presume, but I know some of you speak nationally as well. Do you think traveller homelessness is under-reported and under-accounted for? And if you do, how much and have you any examples? Because that's an important issue. Or traveller lack of appropriate accommodation. Not all is homelessness, both. Okay, the numbers that we have in the Traveller Accommodation Programme, the current app, there's no reference to any travellers living in emergency accommodation. We would work with the national organisations because we wouldn't have the resources to analyse the data at local level to the extent that say the Irish Traveller Movement would. And as far as I know, at the time of the publication of the TAP, there were nine, there's the social housing summary assessment, is it? Housing need assessment. Yeah, recorded nine around the same, nine Traveller families living in homeless accommodation around the same period. So there's an anomaly there in reporting. I know that at the LTAC, I don't think we've ever had numbers of travellers. But we know through our work on the ground, obviously, there are families living in emergency accommodation. Thank you. My third and fourth question could be really rolled into one. My fourth question was about the fact that travellers tend to marry younger than the settled population, the challenges that that creates in terms of housing, etc. But really, to link that to my third question, which is about travellers, young travellers and their prospects of accommodation. If you could speak a little to that, your experience of young travellers. I mean, I have three young sons myself and there are challenges for them when they seek accommodation, either rental or otherwise. But could you speak to the challenges that young travellers have if they want to get married or otherwise? For travellers that want to get married, they are quite young. So they want to get married. So for their family, if they get married, they can stay. If my daughter got married tomorrow, she'd be going with her husband's family. So that's basically to their yard, whatever yard or house they may be in. That's basically a caravan. They're not going to be moving in with the house. But it's like for my son, if he got married tomorrow, he's going to be in my yard. He's going to be staying in my yard. And they are getting married quite young. So they have no way of supporting the wife that they're getting, or the husband. The woman wouldn't have to support the husband. But it's like if he got a wife, he'd have no way of supporting her. So that's my son. I have to support him and his wife. And if they have children, we have to keep them... Not that we have to keep them close, I guess. Like in the travelling community, they go off travelling in the summer. And then that's their base. When they come back, I have their base. I have their security for when they come home. Thank you. And my final question. And it's just because my colleagues have to get in. My final question is just to hone in on one specific area for a minute. And I'll just read the question as I have it here. Given the importance placed on marriage and living near family and traveller culture, how can LGBTQI people, travellers, be accommodated both by their community and through housing policy? In other words, could you speak to that particular cohort? I suppose both myself and Robbie works with the youth service and they have LGBT services. Neither of us work specifically in those. So it's an interesting question. But I think overall, like if the system works for one cohort, you know, you have travellers intersectionality, you have travellers with disabilities, you have travellers who are members of the LGBTQIA plus community, you have travellers who are lone parents. So if the system works for everybody, it will also address some of the issues. I think the system is so broken for every traveller that specific groups within that, I mean, that's, I think the key is fix it for everybody. And that will include all those groups. That's an interesting response. Where intersectionality is an issue. Can I just add to that? Me and Mary-Louise and Angela and I, we sit on the LTAC, and that is what we understand to be the Local Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee. It's a long one, but there's a lot of meaning, I think, put into that title. But if the agencies and the TIG, the Traveller Interagency Group as well, there shouldn't be a need for those organisations. Now, I stand by the LTAC, because as I've told them a few times, I'm not here to accomplish anything, because I know nothing is going to happen, but I'm here to see what yous are at. The TIG, Traveller Interagency, you have education, you have the guards, you have community people, you have all this group of agencies. If they were all doing their job, there wouldn't be a need for the Traveller Interagency, because one agency would say, well, I'm education and you're training and employment and you're accommodation and you're so-and-so. They could phone each other up or maybe send each other an email, but there shouldn't be a need for these committees if the people in these committees were doing their job what they're supposed to be. And with the LTAC the same way, and with any of these groups, there shouldn't be a need if everyone did their job. And the other thing is, if I do something wrong today, I have never been arrested or anything in my life, but if I did something wrong today, I know when I'm doing that that's wrong and I can be arrested for that and I can get jailed for that. Then all these committees, the local authorities and the HSEs and the Department of Education, all these places, there's no sanctions whatsoever, there's no comeback whatsoever. All right, sure, that happened, sure, that was years ago, that was so-and-so was in the job at the time, not us. There's no meaning, there's no accountability, I couldn't find a word, and I'm sorry enough for giving out about it, but it's just that's the situation as we see it. Thanks, Mary.