Ms Sinéad Lucey:

In terms of the implications for the Traveller community, I am happy to have had an opportunity to read the transcripts. Traveller organisations and Traveller representatives have set out some of the implications they perceive and it is difficult to expand further than that. It is the fact that the State is patently in breach of its international obligations. It is the way that, first, Traveller ethnicity has become something of a distraction and these committees are taken up with considering issues around ethnicity that should not arise when they should be focusing on the issues Travellers experience.

Second, many of the recommendations of the committees tend to be linked to the ethnicity question and if the State continues to deny ethnicity, there is no need for the State to consider issues around nomadism. There are implications beyond that.