Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Eileen, Maria, Patrick and Catherine for their contributions. I have had many conversations with Patrick in particular but have learned a huge amount from every person in the Traveller community who has been a part of my life since I was a child. When I listen to the speakers here today, I realise that the onus should never have been on the Traveller community to be a part of my learning or understanding. That is a huge amount of responsibility for anyone to have to carry. No child should sit in a classroom and be made to feel that he or she has to find ways to justify his or her identity, community, heritage, family or peers.

We cannot finish this session without acknowledging the discourse that happened on Twitter over the last few days and that happens more generally and constantly on social media.

It is hard to have to be an observer and watch those conversations go back and forth between people who think or assume they know and start to speak for the Travelling community or think they are advocating for it when sometimes the advocates are in there taking up the space. We can say or I can say that I care about Travellers' progress in education but sometimes the advocates need to move over too. It is really only representative if people represent themselves here or in the educational system. Our job is only done when we are not needed any more. I hope that we and this committee can continue to get to a point where we facilitate not just consultation but equal partnership.

Mr. Nevin and Ms Joyce have raised questions about laws that exist that need to be amended or rolled back that have been part of that assimilation and the culture around horses etc. My passion for horses as a child came from the Travelling community. We would not have had so much access to animals in Tallaght if it was not for our Traveller friends teaching us how to ride horses up and down the Kiltipper Hill. That was an important part of my childhood. We have stood in the way of some of those natural cultural practices in the Travelling community and as a committee we need to seek a review of all that legislation. That is very important.

I thank all the witnesses for everything that they have brought to this discussion.