UNMET housing needs for Travellers in Clare represents a form of discrimination, Deputy Violet-Anne Wynne (SF) has said.
There is a “breach” in the State’s duty of care with the “significant unmet housing needs” in the county, Clare TD Wynne maintained. Adequate housing for members of the Travelling community is an ongoing issue, she flagged.
She referenced a recent Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission’s (IHREC) report revealed that only 2% of people on social housing waiting lists have been identified as Travellers, “even though Travellers are overrepresented in homelessness figures at 9%. These figures don’t add up. Overall, Traveller represent just 0.7% of the general population, so the fact that they have such high representation in homeless figures exposes the inequalities they face”.
Deputy Wynne continued, “there is and has been for over 20 years a legally binding onus on Local Authorities to establish a Local Traveller Consultative Committee and have representation from the Traveller Community. In Clare so far that has not been achieved and efforts have never yielded the desired result. There are issues of institutional, structural bias and prejudice, most of which is subconscious but is very much there”.
“In the 5 years leading up to 2019. just seven traveller accommodation units were delivered in Clare. Between 2015 and 2019, the Council spent roughly €725,000 delivering Traveller Accommodation as per their legal obligation to do so under the Housing (Traveller) Accommodation Act 1998. However, a total allocation of €1.85 million was made available. This phenomenon of Traveller Accommodation funding not being drawn down in its totality in not unique to Clare and was common to most constituencies,” the Kilrush woman commented.
Recommendations of the Traveller Accommodation Expert Review (July 2019) are yet to be implemented, Wynne highlighted. “The report noted that while 94% of local authorities have Traveller-specific objectives in their development plans, only four development plans included maps to identify Traveller-specific accommodation, and only 1 of these 4 has actually planned a future site”.
Violet-Anne concluded, “This ongoing gap between theory and practice; between the great intentions of policy and lack of real life, tangible results for Travellers is in part because of this vagueness and in part subconscious discrimination”.
