Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

You just touched on an issue at the very end and that is that society can be patronising. I have noticed when one is talking about disadvantaged groups that they are often patronised as if they did not have the same latent intelligence that the rest of society has. In certain ways, I have often noticed that they would buy and sell the whole lot of us who are good at pushing pens. Therefore that real partnership is vital because no one knows it like the Traveller community. Nobody has actually walked the walk.

The big challenge for us, as settled people, is to ensure that everybody is treated equally and has an equal input, rather than an agency saying that it consulted and heard what people said in a box-ticking exercise. It must be a real partnership. My experience would tell me that is often not the case.