Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My point is that while we can never excuse people's prejudice or racism against the Travelling community at a local level, why is it allowed to continue? Following an incident such as what happened in Carrickmines, is it any wonder that members of the settled community feel comfortable, wrong as it is, with standing up and saying they want no Travellers in their back yard when they see the example of the State treating members of that community as second-class citizens? It is about political leadership and political will, which has to come from the top down but also has to come from the bottom up. One can call them dark forces or whatever, but there is an institutional racism against Travellers in this State. In some people's minds, acknowledging their ethnicity would be admitting that we treated them wrong for the past 40 years and are not willing to admit that yet.