Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I remember first meeting him when he was in second or third year. It might have been an event we were doing. Could he elaborate on the financial scholarship idea? Would that be done by the educational institutions or would it be a national support system? Over the next few years, it will be said, "Look what Patrick has done. He has a PhD. Why aren't the rest of you getting that?" That happens all the time. The person is held up as a weapon against his or her own community.

How important is it to keep battling against that? We can keep saying that education is the way out but we make it impossible for people to engage in education. We can say education all we want to minority groups but that puts a personal responsibility on the person to engage and get his or her education instead of acknowledging the years of assimilation and oppression that stopped that person getting to the point where he or she can even consider education. Can the witnesses talk about how we get further in terms of supporting people at community level before they even begin to engage in an educational process?

Perhaps Mr. Martin Collins can speak to the issue of political representation, which is most important. I am completely in favour of positive discrimination. We can have gender quotas all we want, but if that 50-50 split is made up of affluent middle-class people, it does not matter whether it is men or women. It is about what the representation is made up of. In the recent local elections, what stood out to me was the number of women who were put on posters by parties but then not supported. How can we ensure if we move towards a place where we encourage Travellers and tell them they need to put themselves forward but then not meet them with anything on the other side that it will not become tokenistic. The fear is Travellers putting their names up on posters on lamppost but political parties and structures still keeping every support from the Travellers and preventing them from being able to have the support and a community network to be elected in the first place. It is one thing putting women, Travellers or working-class people out there for election, but I worry that they will not be met with the systems and structures to help them get elected the way others come together to get their friends elected. There are many mediocre people in here but it is as if a working-class person or Traveller has to be exceptional. They must prove themselves before they are even considered. How can we move past that and acknowledge that many people in here are fairly average. There is nothing exceptional about any of us and there are so many people within the Traveller community who are expected to do the most amazing things before they are even considered to be put on a ballot.