Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Céad míle fáilte to our guests, they are all very welcome. I commend the wonderful rapporteur, Senator Colette Kelleher, and the recent establishment of the Oireachtas committee and I hope that today's proceedings will get somewhere.

Picking up on various points, Ms. Sherlock referred to surveys and mental health issues. I worked for a long time as a psychiatric nurse in a previous life and I have my own issues as to how in retrospect Travellers were treated within the health service, which was so eloquently and sadly talked about by Ms Connors. The reference to traits that several people saw as not belonging to them formed a diagnosis of the traits of Travellers as being something apart. This, in a psychiatric sense, was then seen as something that needed to be treated. We have come a long way since I started out as a student nurse, but we have still a long way to go.

Ms Connor's heartfelt story of accessing vital healthcare for herself together with the recent survey which has shown the increase in the massive suicide issue within the Traveller community prompts the question as to whether there is one thing that can be done to get that message out there. Much has been done around the services but it is not impacting on the community itself.

It is interesting to note the comparisons with the prisoner issue, as referred to by Mr. John Lonergan, where much mental ill-health is captured within the prison and is not treated as a mental health issue either.