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

Many issued have been raised, many of which are cross-cutting. The very obvious one would be how a child in education might be living in very bad accommodation or moving in homelessness from one bed and breakfast accommodation to another, which is something I often encounter. It is an impossible challenge for a child compared to one in a settled home, in a settled place in a settled school.

At the end of his presentation, Mr. Nevin said he had some suggestions for things we could do. I am interested to hear a synopsis of those. Ultimately, the committee will write a report. It will have a page or two of recommendations at the beginning. My experience is that if the recommendations are fairly tight there is a greater chance of delivering them. If one includes everything that would solve the world, it is probably harder to get them to deliver. Mr. Nevin made a very powerful submission. His points are valid about what happened or did not happen in the past, that is the sins of omission and of action, as it were. We have to say how we move forward from here, taking that into account.

The reduced timetable seems a lazy way out. On what basis, unless there was a health reason or some overriding issue why would it be a standard response to someone in the Traveller community to say that they cannot do the full curriculum rather than saying that they need more supports to do the curriculum? That has been the response. Some years ago, a Traveller woman came to me in Tipperary and asked if her child could study Irish. An outrageous proposition had been put to her. Obviously the school could not be bothered teaching a Traveller child Irish and thought that something that was their right was not their right and was suggesting that the exemption from Irish would be taken. What they were saying is that the child had to take it and that a Traveller could not do Irish. Of course, I said that the child could and if this woman wanted her child to do Irish that was her choice. I believe that there is many a Traveller child who has lost out significantly because the more that a child does the full curriculum the more chances he or she will get in life. Therefore, unless there was some reason equivalent to the reason a non-Traveller child would have for not doing Irish there was no reason to deprive them of something that was important to them.

We talk vaguely about teaching Traveller culture but there is no fixed curriculum, with every school paddling its own canoe. Human beings are ingenious at finding ways not to do a thing as it should be done. How do our guests believe Traveller culture should be delivered in schools so that it has the desired effect, and not the opposite effect? DEIS status for schools which have a large proportion of Travellers was mentioned. I was astounded that a school with a large number of Travellers is not guaranteed DEIS status. Would we be better to focus funding on extra resources for the Traveller pupils in such schools or to give it to the school in general, which the school might disburse in a way that does not necessarily assist those from the Traveller community?

One issue that is raised continually in front of this committee is that disadvantage in education and health is interlinked and people in bad accommodation find it equally difficult to learn. Travellers are in halting sites while we are sitting here talking about the issues around those sites. We witnessed a kid trying to do homework. The kid was amazing because they were complicated sums and every one of them was correct but I do not know how the child was meant to concentrate amid the hubbub going on in the vicinity. Another child would have a room or space to themselves if they wanted to study.

We need to look at the challenges faced by the Traveller community. If parents are denied access to education, directly or indirectly, they cannot be of as much assistance to children with the various tasks they have to complete. Should resources be focused and guaranteed to reach Traveller children or is there a danger that, by giving DEIS status to a school, the funds will simply be dissipated throughout the school, notwithstanding the fact that DEIS status is given on account of the number of Travellers at the school?

I remember the day the announcement on ethnicity was made. I was very pleased it was made but I was worried that official Ireland would think it had done its bit. My experience has been that it has made very little real difference. I would be interested in the comments of our guests on that point. The settled community needs a huge amount of education. Sociological surveys state that settled people's attitudes to all different ethnic groups across the world are prejudiced but that they are most prejudiced, by far, against Travellers.