Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

First of all I must say thank you to Missie. Sometimes I fear that I am becoming desensitised to trauma, pain and struggle. I definitely had this challenged in me just there. I was definitely re-energised in listening, supporting and continuing that fight she has long been fighting. Hopefully we can play a part and see through all of the work the witnesses have been doing for all of these years.

Because we keep having the intersection between education, accommodation and so on, and given the role Jim is in now, would it not make sense to remove all criteria for everything when there is a health crisis and a crisis of the Travelling community? This would mean removing the criteria for housing and for medical cards and for literally every barrier that exists until it is corrected and until Travellers are living longer. One cannot positively age in a caravan that is full of mould and cannot be adapted, where there cannot be a shower chair or all of the things our older population needs to positively age at home.

When I first started to engage with Pavee Point around education and addiction back in 2010, the number of Travellers was at 52,000. Drug use was not a feature 15 years ago when I first started working in the drug sector. A very small number of Travellers were using, or in chaotic substance abuse, at that stage. At the time a woman from Pavee Point told me that because of the age discrepancy in life expectancy Travellers would never usually enter the nursing home or home help system. How can we support Travellers to be able to care for their loved ones within their communities when they are facing illnesses?

In nursing homes, doctors are paid a higher amount to visit the elderly in nursing homes - I can be corrected on this and the Minister of State might know - than they are in the homeless sector where there is also an ageing population, as with the Traveller population, that is ageing at 45 and 50 years of age due to life conditions. Do we need to look at the pension packages provided when someone enters a nursing home and make these packages accessible across the board to people living in the homeless sector and to people in the Traveller community who would not usually end up there? Perhaps I am wrong about the numbers of Travellers who end up in nursing homes but I know that the woman said they generally tend to care for those people at home. Because a Traveller's life expectancy is much shorter the length of that care is probably much shorter. Could we look at nursing home types of care and how it could be implemented into the Traveller community in the context of the benefits of nursing home care along with the pension packages and the pension ages, and recognise that a pensioner exists at a much earlier stage among the Traveller community? What kinds of supports would this bring if it was an official recognition?

My main point is the question around mobile health units. Those who need healthcare the most are often the least likely to receive it. There are mobile health units used by the homeless sector and the Roma community in rural parts of Ireland where it is harder to get access to healthcare. Is there a benefit to mobile healthcare units being Traveller specific and where we could make sure that healthcare and primary healthcare gets directly into Traveller communities?

On the implementation of everything we have spoken of at this committee, would it make sense to have a Traveller-led taskforce within the Department of Health to make sure the implementation happens so that Travellers are leading that change and that charge rather than just being consulted in an ad hocway? How quickly could we get things done if the groups and organisations we see coming in to this committee were actually part of a taskforce within the Department?

How can we remove the criteria and barriers? I am talking about education and the leaving certificate points systems with regard to removing every single criteria there is for Travellers, and removing application forms and prescriptions. I propose removing all of that until Travellers are in a position where they can live full lives and reach their full potential.

Life expectancy for Travellers has decreased dramatically. It is policy that has killed the Traveller community, rather than bad health outcomes or education. We need to remove the policy implications so that Travellers can access all the things they need to access.