Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

First, I want to comment on the 80% unemployment rate in the Traveller community.

That, in itself, represents a dire failure of the State in dealing with the issue. It is not something that happened overnight. It has been a prevailing attitude right throughout the Departments of State and within my own community - the settled community. When there is 80% unemployment such as in the working class areas I represent of Crumlin and Drimnagh, and areas such as Cabra, if people are unable to access work, their only option is to depend on social welfare or find money somewhere else and do something else to get the few extra bob in one's pocket if one wants to feed one's children, purchase all those basic needs and pay bills. In many ways when the settled community says, "Look at that person on the make" or that they are not accredited, they will do a sub-standard job or they will rob, it is that racism that the State has allowed to develop.

All the submissions that the witnesses put in as groups are positive. They are putting forward ways that we can deal with it. The proposed Department of Traveller affairs is something that we should highlight. The point the Travellers have made from the beginning is: everything with us, not without us. The Traveller input must be included all along the way. It looks as though with all the reports we have had, there has been some input by the Traveller community but in many of them, there was not. That is what we will have to push in the recommendations we make.

It is brilliant the work that the Galway Traveller movement and the Clondalkin Traveller Development Group have done in those enterprises. They are brilliant initiatives but they are not enough. We need targeted ways of developing the skills that the Traveller community has, and can bring into employment. I support every recommendation. I refer to Ms Quilligan and the Kerry Travellers' recommendations. Different ones are crucial.

There are members of the Traveller community over 50 who are not working. How can they be targeted to get back into work? As I said at the previous meeting, I know a number of people who are in that position. They just do not have the confidence, the education and the skills, and the Intreo offices are not supporting them. It is a matter of bringing that down into those Departments to direct those people into employment. Then there are those in their 20s, 30s and 40s who have not been able to get jobs and young people in education for whom it is a matter of ensuring that they get the proper education that they need. We have had hearings on education, social inclusion, etc. I do not have many questions to ask. How can these groups be targeted? It is all there. We have it from the community. We have it from the witnesses saying what needs to be done. I support, in particular, the affirmative action programmes across the public sector. We have done it with disability where one walks into Agriculture House and on every floor one will see somebody in a wheelchair, with a walking stick or whatever working full time and contributing to the workplace. We need that same action throughout the public sector. One seldom sees it in private industry; one mainly sees it in the public sector.