Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There has been progress on housing in general, which is obviously good for Travellers because a lot of people on the housing list in Galway, for example, are from the Traveller community. However, the list still gets longer, and the number of homeless people is not coming down. I often wish we did not use the word "homeless" because some people think we are only talking about those sleeping in the streets. I am still not clear if the outstanding demand from Travellers looking for houses of all types has gone down or up in the past three years. I should also warn the Minister of State that the committee collectively has a number of allergies, and they are getting worse and more acute. One of them is to reports, reviews and plans. The Minister of State knows that by the time they have done that, he will be gone. We are saying that for his own good. There are obvious decisions that could be made without a report, review or whatever. Some things we mentioned today have been so reviewed that it is time for decisions. Some of the best decisions I saw made in government were made fast by people who took decisions, including by Ministers for Finance. I accept the problem that in those days finance and public expenditure were in the one Department. They just decided something was so obvious that it needed to be done. They saw that the cost was not great, and the human benefit far outweighed any modest cost. I just thought I would warn the Minister of State about this allergy. It is quite contagious. He might get it too. It is an allergy we need in the body politic, because during my time in politics the amount of time going round the mulberry bush has grown and grown. I am not saying it is the case with the Minister of State, but I have seen cases where a Department decides to develop a plan. What you get after two or three years is a copy and paste of what Departments were doing anyway and little innovation. We should give a warning at this stage, because it is only fair the Minister of State knows that we have these strong allergies, and we will be back again and again in a short time.

We have seven months to get things done, and we are confident the Minister of State will do things, but we are looking for modest things. Modest change will make a massive difference if we could achieve it. This committee made a decision, thanks to the Chair and the members, to go for quick wins and not try to change the world in one go. We have been focused on what we are trying to do, and we have been modest. We are trying to go to the most urgent things first.