Ms Kathleen Sherlock:

There has to be a national strategy. Travellers have been completely left out of the labour market. They have not been considered part of it forever. Travellers, by nature, work in social enterprise. They would have worked in a family unit, whether it was collecting scrap or, in our case, at the beach. We picked winkles and sold them. That was our business. It was a family business. From a young age, Travellers worked collectively for the good of the family. This has started to change, simply because there are no jobs. The types of social enterprise that existed in the past no longer exist.

I was very glad I was asked about accessing employment. I know Travellers whose parents have put in a great effort to ensure their children would go to school. The children attend school every day and have never missed a day. I will give two examples. The children of one family whose children went to school every day came out barely literate. Therefore, the system has completely failed not only the children but also the family and their expectations. It is wasting children's time and setting them up for failure if they are not being taught and steered towards being productive, contributing members of society.

We encounter Travellers who are not even able to get a job in a supermarket. There are examples of young fellows who came out of school and who did not get jobs in supermarkets that they had applied for, although their friends got them. The supermarkets may still be advertising positions but the Travellers will not get them. I encountered the case a young Traveller girl who looked for work experience in a second-hand shop but who was told she could not get it. The turnaround in the shop is high. We have to have a national strategy, therefore. From a Traveller perspective, there is a need to send children to school not just for the sake of it but to have an education that will result in employment. We also need to consider this from a Government perspective and deal with the barriers. There has to be a national strategy.

Travellers are getting corralled into dead ends, for the most part. It does not affect Travellers alone as people in deprived areas are experiencing exactly the same thing. The education system is failing them. They are unable to get jobs. The outcomes, therefore, will be dead-end outcomes. The outcome will be over-dependence on the State. There is a high risk of addiction, depression and suicide because people cannot cope. A small percentage are engaging in antisocial behaviour or crime. That is where they are being corralled, however. We blame people for being at their destination without considering all the contributing factors that got them there. We need a national strategy. It is not always a question of education as there are those who are well trained and well qualified but who cannot find a job.

Employment needs to be targeted to address that.

To return to an earlier point, there needs to be diversity. One size will not fit all. Some people are already trained, educated and ready to enter employment, while others are competent, capable and talented in specific areas. Some Travellers can strip apart a car and put it back together with a blindfold, some know everything about horses, while some young female beauticians are naturally talented in various areas. Such people just need a little training towards qualification to fill that gap because they are naturally talented in their areas. It is a different strategy but we need a national strategy to deal with employment.