Mr. Oein de Bhairdúin:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to attend. When people speak of Travellers, it is my experience that we as Travellers are rarely the ones who are speaking and, ever rarer, the ones who are heard.

I am currently manage St. Oliver’s education centre, Cloverhill. We mainly engage with adults over the age of 18. Those who engage with the centre are predominantly from the Traveller community. Many of the newer students were young when draconian cuts were made to Traveller-specific resources in 2011 and 2012. That was when the visiting teachers service for Travellers was disbanded, resource teachers for Travellers were no longer deployed, cuts to the 1.5 additional teacher hours were made, and all senior Traveller training centres were closed, without a suitable alternative. The continued effects of the cuts, compounded by low expectations and the system being either disinterested in or having difficulty in engaging with Travellers, owing to a very settled narrative, continue to be reflected daily in the lives of young people.

At this stage, the committee will be very well aware of the statistics surrounding Travellers in general as well as those on education, but I will repeat them because, while they are numbers, they are also reflective of people's lives. According to the CSO 2016 census, just 13.3% of Traveller females have an upper second level education. Nearly six in every ten Traveller males were educated to primary level at the very most, and only 167 Travellers have a third level qualification. According to the ERSI's report, A Social Portrait of Travellers in Ireland, dated 2017, Travellers are 50 times more likely to leave school without the leaving certificate and only 9% of those aged between 25 and 34 have completed second level education.

There exists a very real misconception within the wider community that Travellers do not value education. This is not true. There exists among all people a desire to prosper, grow and learn, and the doorways created by education are greatly valued and desired by Travellers. However, many of these doorways are locked to us. They can be locked by the under-provision of accommodation, the consequences of poverty, when education strategies just remain strategies, and when they, the doorways, are not even considered to be for us. Sometimes when they are open, they have been opened by those who may know very little about us, or a lot about us that is erroneous.

Currently, there are programmes in place in regard to third level education for Travellers. These are much needed and very warmly welcomed but they will be little more than bandages on deep wounds when the vast majority of Travellers do not finish second level. The majority of Travellers who leave the education system early leave at second level. Additional strategies and programmes are needed at this level to support retention and completion. We also need to be more aware of intersectionality within the community and create robust programmes that include and support it. Currently, the National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy has only one action in regard to disabilities, action 12, which seeks to facilitate children at preschool level. The ESRI report states, by way of age comparison, that 10% of Travellers have a learning disability, 13% experience mobility limitations and 11% have difficulty in getting to school or work due to a long-term condition or disability. Consideration of this intersectionality is essential if we are to make progress.

A very real and bright blessing in my life has been my involvement in regard to the Traveller Culture and History in Education Bill, a Bill that seeks to be part of a process of ensuring schools are safer places for Traveller children, a process in which our identities will not be denied, reduced or removed, and a process in which all children and young people learn about who we really are, not only as an attempt to remove the biases and suspicions we live with but also to reflect a very real, truer Ireland.

Since 2001, the NCCA has made recommendations to include Traveller culture and history in the curriculum but, in conjunction with a recent NCCA audit, it was proven that these recommendations have largely failed, with only two optional modules in the senior cycle being directly inclusive of Travellers. I understand that the Minster of Education and Skills remains very open to the process and I feel we must step away from the charity of potentially being included to an assurance that we will be. Sadly, time has shown that when Travellers are a choice, they are just not chosen. To do other than what I propose places a great weight of responsibility for the education of students, teachers and the institutions on the shoulders of children.

We need to ensure that intercultural awareness training is mandatory for teachers, regardless of who they are teaching, as there is a wide array of opinions and practices, deliberate or unconscious, that can be devastating to the young. Education should be in a place of safety, it should be aware, and it should be accessible and for all. Programmes help and projects can bring some opportunities for progression but without an authentic structural change, we will be forever an add-on. Our children and yours deserve much better than that.