Dr. Robbie McVeigh:

I should probably draw out for the Deputy that, while the dangers of ethnicity denial have been recognised - I have spoken on that, urging governments and states, not just in Ireland, to be careful about doing this in an arbitrary way - it is also true that ethnicity denial may imply racism denial in the sense that, if one is not in an ethnic group, one cannot experience racism. That has not tended to be part of the discourse, but it is a dangerous implication. Consider the all-Ireland health study on Travellers, which was an important intervention across Ireland and was based on the recognition of Traveller ethnicity and had significant achievements. If one follows the logic of the current position, that should not have happened at all. We should not have had a document referring to Travellers as an ethnic group and we should not have had health interventions that were based on that reality because the State did not recognise Travellers as an ethnic group. The logic of this is that Travellers never experience racism and that whatever they do experience is something else. That is even more dangerous than ethnicity denial. One does not need to look further than Nazi Germany to know the implications of claiming that something one is doing is not racism. It is not silly, abstruse or hyperbolic to point out that this kind of policy by governments has dangerous implications. The notion of denying that Travellers experience racism has not followed ethnicity denial, but it is always implicit in that approach.