Dr. Frances McGinnity:

I thank the Deputy for the question on Traveller women. Many of the gender differences parallel those we find in the population more generally. Traveller women are a little more likely than Traveller men to complete secondary education but are less likely to be at work, especially married women and mothers. In the whole population of Ireland, women have higher educational qualifications than men but lower employment rates. One policy solution to this is to try to facilitate childcare. There is some policy action through the national childcare scheme and the facilitation of childminders. Some of the solutions are Traveller-specific and some are matters of improving national policy and upping the game regarding supports for working families.

On working from home, the ESRI was not focusing specifically on Travellers but on migrants and Covid. One of the points to make about working from home is that regardless of the issues an employee might have with the home workspace, such as overcrowding, the Internet connection and whether he or she has a computer, there are many jobs in the Irish labour market that cannot be done from home. These include the jobs of essential workers and all those in the food and accommodation industry, who are on temporary lay-off now. On working from home, I hope circumstances will improve. It should really be borne in mind that people such as binmen just cannot work from home.