Mr. Patrick Nevin:

I thank the Cathaoirleach, committee and everyone here today. When I got the opportunity to come here to speak today, I made a conscious decision to stay away from statistics regarding the very pertinent issues that have impacted on Travellers' daily lives since the foundation of the State. I knew representatives from the Traveller community and allies would speak about that.

In 2017, the State decided, led by the then Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, to acknowledge Traveller ethnicity. The quest by Traveller activists and allies for the call on the State to give due recognition and ethnic status to Travellers was a major hill to climb. At times, they were ridiculed and accused of following a pure folly in calling on the State to give ethnic status to Travellers. However, it happened.

I was present here that night and it was one of the proudest moment of my life as a Traveller man and activist who has been involved in Traveller activism all my life, but in particular in a professional capacity over the past 24 or 25 years. This is a personal issue for Travellers across the generations. My father passed away in June 2017, but witnessed the acknowledgement of ethnicity. I remember having a conversation with him and he said to me in a very stoic manner that, "Well, at least we amount to something". It was an extremely positive outcome for Travellers.

If we are to push forward from the success of 2017 in regard to ethnicity, the next and most natural step is for the State to give a State apology for the process of othering, segregation and anti-Travellerism since the formation of the State.

If I am correct with my dates, it was signed into play on 6 December 1921 and began to paddle its own canoe in 1922. From 1922 to approximately 1961, we saw various Dáil and local authority reports. We saw the introduction of a particular piece of legislation that had an anti-Traveller sentiment, namely, section 20 of the Local Government Act 1925, which gave local authorities the absolute power to move, evict and displace those who tended to dwell in tents or vans on the margins of the roadside. This was a piece of ethnic profiling at a legislative level. That is one example. Between 1922 and 1961, we saw the language of othering, segregation and discrimination in the halls of power at local, national and electoral level. Various individuals from various backgrounds and political persuasions used anti-Traveller sentiment in their election campaigns to seek success.

The next stage for the Government and State following recognition of ethnicity is an apology. We need a State apology. Ms Maughan raised the spectre of the Commission on Itinerancy that was set up in 1961 and published its report in August 1963. I want to give a snippet on this because it is an important document. It is extremely pertinent for us as a people, a community and a nation within a nation. The report was published in August 1963. Something interesting happened in 1961 and 1962. The writer and sociologist Hannah Arendt followed the case of Adolf Eichmann, who was one of the key players in the Wannsee Conference that took place in 1942 in Germany where they came up with the "final solution to the Jewish problem". She published a book in 1963, The Banality of Evil, in which she wrote of following the trial of Adolf Eichmann and about this individual. He was just your ordinary everyday human being. He was just a bureaucrat. He was just an individual who wanted to be successful in his career. He happened to join the Nazis and subsequently he became one of the key players in that absolutely catastrophic and horrific period of time.

The language used at the Wannsee Conference shows up in the Commission of Itinerancy's report. The language of othering and segregation appears in the document. We, as a nation, a people and a society, need to question how this document came into play and how in the following decades it played into the creation of this us and them and superior versus inferior mentality and the idea that the settled sedentary population are the true heirs to the Irish nation while the Traveller "tinker" population are somehow a failed settled people and, therefore, need to be rehabilitated and, indeed, incarcerated in some cases to be brought back into the fold. If the State is genuine, and I believe there are fantastic people among the various political persuasions on the committee and throughout Ireland, the next stage is a State apology. That is pretty much where I am at. I thank the committee.