Ms Tanya Ward:

I welcome the question on Traveller children. There is a multiplicity of things we need to do. From talking to Travellers about their everyday experiences, one of the core things to address is the discrimination and interpersonal racism they experience, which influences the actions of council members and local authorities in deciding what to do around accommodation issues. One of the striking and shocking things when we went to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child was to hear Pavee Point, whose representatives attended with us, present to the committee how Travellers felt after the Carrickmines fire. Travellers could not get their heads around the lack of compassion for them after the biggest fire in the State since the Stardust fire. It was symptomatic of something deeper in Irish society which we have yet to address. We need to do more work on valuing Travellers and their culture and identity in Irish society and to address the discrimination that happens for Travellers on an everyday basis. Consistently, they will tell one that they have to hide their Traveller identity in the workplace because they are unlikely to hold onto their jobs. We had Kathleen speak at the launch of our report card and she talked about her experience. When she got her first job after school and they found out she was a Traveller, things suddenly became much more difficult and she was constructively dismissed. If one looks at what happened to the Equality Authority around the same time and the reduction in funding, it just so happens that discrimination for Travellers increased and we did not address it. There is a big piece there that we need to address. Obviously, we have the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which has a very important role to play to address discrimination.

We may need to look at sanctions in respect of local authority members and the way local authorities operate or something more forthright to ensure they make the decisions to provide accommodation. One particular local authority returned €2 million to the Department and that has been done in successive years. This particular local authority area has a very large Traveller population. Something must be done at national level to address this crisis. Travellers are ending up in homeless accommodation. That is what Focus Ireland is saying. Travellers have larger families and they are finding it more difficult to find homes and accommodation. We need to take a more forthright and twinned approach by looking at Traveller identity and addressing discrimination. We have to get to Traveller children themselves. They do not value themselves at this point in time. Morale is very low and they feel very low. We had a consultation with children from around the country in which Traveller children took part. There were two children in particular who, while they had never experienced discrimination, said they had no hope for their futures. We have to change that. Every Traveller child in the country should have hope for his or her future.