Ms Concepta de Brun:

There are some details through the national drug treatment centre board data systems, which we could make available to the committee. We do not have them to hand. There is an ethnic identifier. The centre can identify the number of Travellers attending its services, which is to be welcomed.

We rely on local relationships with the drugs task forces to deliver local needs approaches within the services. For example, the drugs task force in Clondalkin has worked very closely with Travellers there to develop a culturally appropriate response to counselling. We hope we will get the money to fund that soon. The background to that is that it is counselling for people who are affected by alcohol and substance misuse in particular. That model represents a local response. We would like to see other Traveller health units engage with their drugs task forces and that moneys for addiction services would be invested in a similar way but we are not there yet.