Ms Kathleen Sherlock:

Deputy Ó Cuív is spot on. We all agree with that. We know that we cannot separate the living conditions from opportunities. There are the living conditions, the social exclusion and the lack of employment. These all impact upon health. We all know we cannot separate that.

At present, to answer Deputy Ó Cuív's question on the study, it is too soon yet to be able to do a study because the vast majority of Travellers who are getting educated now were getting educated and having opportunities within the past 20 years. I grew up with three grandparents. We all know many children who are growing up without any grandparent at all, and some of them are growing up without a father.

I want to come back a little, if I can, to mental health and addiction. Much of the time, we talk about addiction and suicide as if it is something that is endemic within the Traveller community. The reality is these are new phenomena. They are environmental factors. Travellers are not becoming addicted or having health issues for the most part because they are predisposed to that. They are managing situations or unable to manage situations. When we look at how to address it, I must come at it from where we are when we are meeting Travellers. My friends here are better at the statistics on it than I am.

We are meeting Travellers who are crying out for help, perhaps for someone in their family who has a mental health issue and is threatening suicide. When they look for help or support it is not there. Therefore, one thing we have recommended is a national mental health strategy. We must look at delivering very quickly on an action plan or plans which reduce Traveller deaths. I do not know how many Travellers have died since we first looked for a national action plan on Traveller health. I am not sure how many Travellers will die before we get an action plan. The people we are losing are not statistics; they are our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins and children, and this has an impact.

We need a national strategy that will deliver services when Travellers are crying out looking for supports around mental health. We know of families who have looked for supports and found they were not there because it was out of hours, and the family member died within a few hours or days. If a Traveller presents in a suicidal situation, he or she needs to be fast-tracked. We cannot leave them out until the services are available next week; it must be dealt with immediately as an emergency service.