Mr. Thomas McCann:

I thank members for the opportunity to present to the committee. For people who do not know me, "Mincéirs Whiden" is Gammon, the Traveller language, and means "Travellers talking". It is an all-Ireland Traveller-only forum of approximately 900 members. I am saying this so that the committee has some understanding of where I am coming from on this issue.

I thank members for this opportunity to make a presentation and, as already has been stated, for a follow-on work to that done by the previous committee. A lot of good work and recommendations came out of that, which unfortunately were not acted upon.

It was the State that institutionalised the mindset that Ms Ronnie Fay and others have spoken of, that Travellers are a sub-culture of poverty and are a failed part of the settled community. It is akin to seeing the shadow of one self; that we are failed settled people who need to be rehabilitated. It was the State that institutionalised that mindset in the itinerancy report of 1963. It did not happen by accident. This has been continually reflected since the 1960s in policy, practice and attitudes towards Travellers, including all the Traveller children who went through schools, including myself. We nearly were educated to not be a Traveller. Mr. Martin Collins spoke of the internalised oppression and shame that comes from that. I am a psychotherapist and we see how it becomes internalised; when one cannot defend it as a child then one will internalise it. There is a lot of internalised shame and it has done damage to countless Travellers. Reference was made to suicide and mental health and I deal with that on a daily basis. I know Senator Frances Black from another arena with regard to mental health issues and I see internalised oppression and shame every day of the week, as well as how that internalised struggle is dealt with or sometimes how some people, unfortunately, cannot deal with it.

Many Travellers, as a result of being told so by their teachers and by the media, feel from the day they are born that they are failed settled people. That is the message the State has given to all Travellers. The State is saying that actually, the culture is not a valid culture, that really a Traveller is a failed settled person. It did not recognise any of the evidence that is there to the contrary and the State has not come up with anything so far. As I talk I get emotional about the matter because as Ms Ronnie Fay and Mr. Martin Collins have said, we have been dealing with this for 35 years. I re-read a leaflet recently from Minceir Misli another all-Traveller group I was with in the 1980s about the recognition of ethnicity. We are still here and the State continues to refuse it. We do not have equality in the State and we can never have equality in the State for Travellers until Travellers are recognised as an ethnic group. It is saying that one can have equality but really, the Traveller is a failed settled person. That is the message Travellers are getting. We cannot have full equality for Travellers until Travellers are recognised as an ethnic group in the State. As long as the State continues to deny Traveller ethnicity it is still working towards what is written in the 1963 Commission on Itinerancy report and named as the "final solution".

I know the language has changed from "absorption" to "integration" but unless there is recognition of ethnicity, it is still assimilation. The end product is still the same. The language has changed and there has been some move towards change, but recognition of ethnicity is one of the crucial issues that underpin all the actions and the mindset, including the relationship between settled people and Travellers on this island. The national Traveller and Roma inclusion strategy, NTRIS, is being developed at present and we asked that "inclusion" be the term used rather than "integration" because the word integration really does not do what it says on the tin. If this strategy is not based on a recognition of Traveller ethnicity, then it is going to be based on the same mindset that has driven the policies in the State for generations and which has done countless damage to the relationships between settled people and Travellers but also to the everyday lives of Travellers themselves and to Traveller children on this island. It is through that recognition that we need to change. If we are going to make a change we need to make it based on respect for cultural identity for all - as Mr. Martin Collins has said - and there is no conflict between ethnicity and nationality. I attended a lecture recently by a Nigerian lady who said there are some 350 different ethnic groups in Nigeria. For a moment I thought she was talking about the whole of Africa, but she was talking about the 350 ethnic groups in Nigeria. All are black, some spoke the same language some spoke other languages, negating the idea that one cannot have a separate ethnic identity without being of a separate nationality. That mindset needs to be challenged within Ireland because we are going to have a lot more ethnic minorities - and we already do - who will be Irish but of different ethnic origin. If that does not change, the annihilation of Traveller culture will continue and we will continue to see the conditions that Travellers live in, and we will continue to see people internalising their oppression that expresses itself in different ways, such as through addiction, suicide, self-harm or a complete and utter breakdown of a community. We can see it through homelessness, which is a huge issue in Ireland. Travellers really did not have an issue with homelessness. I know that we live in pretty poor conditions but we did not have an issue with homelessness up until about ten or 15 years ago. A person could get a trailer and move somewhere, but with the advent of the anti-trespass legislation we can no longer do that. The private rented sector or the market will not come in and do anything about that with regard to Travellers. We can see it already and more and more Travellers are becoming homeless. We need to address these issues. As we sit here there are people all over the State living in conditions they can no longer tolerate. Most of the people sitting on this side of the committee room are out there every day of the week and see it happening on the ground. I know that I get a bit emotional when I talk about these matters because it does affect me. I lived in it. I grew up in Cherry Orchard, one of the first big campsites in Ballyfermot. I lived in Labre Park and in a caravan most of my life. I saw it at the ground level but now it is even worse because people cannot move somewhere else. If the State does not recognise Traveller ethnicity I am no sure where the State is going with regard to equality. It is only words on paper and does not mean anything. I thank the committee.