Ms Brigid Quilligan:

In response to Deputy McGrath, the reason ethnicity is an issue so dear to my heart is that I think some of the hate we experience as adults and children - I will speak about that in a second - is because we are seen, as Mr. Martin Collins said, as deviants and as villains, as a kind of a subculture and as people who do not conform and will not participate in society. Through generations, where we were once a strong, proud people - and for some part still are - we have been devalued within society. Never before in my lifetime have I seen such hate as I have seen in the past five years. If one opens a newspaper or turns on the television, if one is in a shop or on a train, if one looks at Facebook, Twitter, thejournal.ie or anything at all, anti-Traveller sentiment is fired at one. As Travellers, we experience this in our daily lives and we try to set about changing that by making people aware of us and by working in partnership with people. However, while we accept there is a certain tolerance from the people on the street, where it is happening more often is with people in positions of power who are coming out with absolutely outrageous anti-Traveller propaganda in the media in public open forums. It is open season on Travellers, with little or no consequences for their actions. When one is a Traveller, whether one is in the line of work we do or is a doctor, a hairdresser or anything else, be it getting involved or being a mother staying at home with one's children, when one sees such things in the media, one asks whether there is no law in the land of Ireland for one's people. We ask if there no justice for our people if so much hate can be expressed towards us. Like anyone, we internalise things. If one is constantly told and fed negative things about one's self, one internalises them. Certainly, we see some of our young people struggling with their identity and it is very hard, as a parent, to try to instil pride in one's identity because of all the hate one encounters. I do not know whether anyone else wishes to add to this point.