Mr. Patrick Nevin:

I thank the Chairman and committee members for inviting us. Likewise, I will not go into our submission per sebut I will put it in context in respect of barriers faced by Travellers.

To understand the barriers of education for Travellers we must look to the State's engagement with them from the foundation of the State, particularly from 1963 onwards. From the beginning, Travellers were denied ownership of their position. This is obvious in the Irish Folklore Commission's survey of 1952. In this document, the sedentary members of society were given the opportunity to speak, to name and place them, and to deny them the ownership of their position in the broader sphere of Irish society. The document to this day is used by academics both at home and abroad as a starting point in their academic discourse on Travellers, yet at no time have Travellers been given an opportunity to respond to the ready-made representation of the commission's respondents. From this we see how Travellers were to become idealised and denigrated, and made into an object of representation and investigation. At no time do we hear the voice of the Traveller in this document.

From this point onwards there was a deepening interest in the Traveller community and the State taking a more active role in "the problem of Travellers". I use this phrase openly, as this was how the State viewed my community. This culminated in the Government Report of the Commission on Itinerancy in 1963. The voice of the Traveller is again not represented in this report. The opening statement in the document in which the Chairman of the commission addresses the members of the commission is more disturbing . The statement makes it clear that the solution to the Traveller problem is the complete absorption of my community: "The fact that there can be no final solution of the problems created by itinerants until they are absorbed into the general community". We must see this as the starting point when we consider the barriers that are faced by Travellers when accessing education. This open and transparent assault on my community's way of life and identify must be acknowledged as a major contribution factor to the exclusion of Travellers from the educational institutions. For us to respond to the serious issues that Travellers face in their everyday lives, we must accept that the State needs to look at the issue of reparations. We must acknowledge this injustice, as we have acknowledged the injustices that was perpetrated on the women who were institutionalised in such places as the Magdalen laundries. Fifty years of State-sponsored denial of Traveller identity and culture has not only impacted on educational attainment but also has created an internalised oppression, barriers and lack of self-worth in my community.

Traveller ethnicity has been recognised since March 2017. Such recognition on its own does not acknowledge or repair the damage that has been inflicted on the Traveller community by the State with its policies of absorption and assimilation. The State, and its institutions, need to accept its direct role in the catastrophic damage inflicted on the Traveller community. We must have an open, transparent and honest discourse on this matter like we have had in recent years about other State and institutional wrongs. Our submission has, to some extent, outlined a number of recommendations and ways that we can move forward in partnership to achieve more equal and improved outcomes for my community in terms of education.

Finally, while addressing education, we must remember that the State's policies have also had a negative impact and created inequalities and poor outcomes for my community in other areas such as health, employment, accommodation, culture and language.