Ms Kathleen Sherlock:

To come back to how we address this, we need to deal with Traveller children receiving meaningful education. We continue to see Traveller children come out of school who can barely read and write. That must be addressed and we need to understand why that is. There has been a great deal of discussion recently around reduced timetables and that needs to be addressed. Ireland is one of the most developed countries in the world. People are coming from around the world to work here and find better opportunities, yet we have 84% unemployment in the Traveller community. It is not just the Traveller community. There are working-class areas that have high levels of unemployment also. People are being left behind. We need to ensure we have positive discrimination in employment but we also need to assess children to ensure they benefit from proper educational attainment.

We were asked about Traveller representation by way of a Seanad seat. Over the next year or so, we hope to work within national organisations and local Traveller groups to build a Traveller constituency whereby every Traveller has the right to vote for a Traveller who represents them. With the help of God, we will get a Seanad seat. If we do, Travellers can nominate themselves or be put forward for the Traveller community to vote on the holder. We do not want simply to have one Seanad seat, however. We need Travellers to be represented where the political decisions are being made and that is in local and national government. I will come back to a point I made earlier. Without a doubt, there is no community in Ireland that has been as negatively affected by political decisions and indecision as the Traveller community. We need positive discrimination and we need seats to be allocated for Travellers. However, we also need to provide training. One of the things Minceirs Whiden has done was to put together videos at the conference to educate Travellers on why they should register to vote and how and on how they should cast their votes. We must look at where people are at. People who are being excluded from the political system or who have not been part of it do not understand the mechanics of it. We need to look at where they are at. I hope that answers the question.