Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It does not have to make a presentation - a response by way of letter would suffice. We can then, based on the response, decide if we want to engage in a formal meeting. It would be useful if, as suggested by Ms Fay, we had sight of the strategy which is supposed to cover the Roma and Traveller communities but makes no reference to the Roma community. The Minister for Justice and Equality has stated that these issues will be addressed during the EU Presidency. While he is not accountable to this committee on EU Presidency issues it would be useful for him, at a time when we are encouraging the Department to take steps to address this issue, to include it. The key issue is that nothing can be provided for in the strategy because the Department has no census figures in this area. It might be helpful to the committee to prompt it to do the job of work done by UCD in terms of the Travellers' health group and so on. It can then at least point to what it is doing and suggest to other European Union countries that they do something similar.