Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a number of questions and I ask the witnesses to respond as appropriate.

I am interested in hearing the views on the issue of Traveller training centres. Several years ago, a decision was taken to phase out the provision of Traveller education through dedicated training centres and for them to be mainstreamed. Have any studies been done in respect of this area to determine whether it has worked? In Finglas, the closure of the St. Joseph's Traveller training centre had a big impact in terms of engagement on the part of the Traveller community, particularly for older members who subsequently became more cut off from the wider community. I suspect an effort to mainstream education services and prevent segregated education has not worked. I would be interested if the witnesses have any experience in this regard.

I want to hear more about the graduate network for Travellers. What measures can we put in place in the context of mentoring? Innovate Communities has a clever programme called INSPIRE which links people who have been successful or graduated from university with younger people in disadvantaged communities. Could we do something similar for the graduate network for the Traveller community?

No one will be surprised if I say the most flagrant and blatant form of racism in Ireland is that experienced by the Traveller community. We see that around basic issues such as booking family events at hotels and so on. In the darkness of a recruitment process, it often is just between the owner of a business and the CVs in front of him. Given that SMEs are a big part of the economy and that, in the context of lower-skilled employment, there are fewer formal structures like HR and so forth, how do we intervene to prevent that racism from excluding people at such an early stage in a recruitment process?