Ms Brigid Quilligan:

I will wrap it up in terms of the backward step for integration. I would just say to the Senator that at the moment my people are slowly dying. If one looks at the suicide rate, it is seven times the rate for settled people. If one looks at the high level of unemployment and the low level of attainment in education, the Travellers the Senator spoke about more than likely, and no more than I had to do in the past, probably had to conceal their identity. Maybe that is not so. Maybe I am speaking out of turn, but I know that many Travellers throughout the country, to secure employment in the first place, have to hide their identity and pretend they are not Travellers. We have supported people in employment cases around this in that when they are in employment they have to pretend they are not Travellers, much as somebody from the LGBT community would have had to do a few years ago and in some circumstances still has to do. One almost hides one's identity.

Things are so bad for us at the moment that we have to ask ourselves if they can get any worse. We want recognition of our people. We think that with recognition comes respect in order that we can write our own history and people can learn who we really are rather than being told who we are and set the record straight and start to change things.