Dr. Frances McGinnity:

Deputy Mitchell had some questions for me. On the point about data, many members of the committee will know that ethnicity is rarely measured in Ireland. Getting an ethnic identifier on these data sets and these services to allow tracking takes a while. If it is in a certain health database, primary school database or the Department of Social Protection database it will take a while to build that up to inform how Travellers are progressing and to allow people to monitor what is going well and what is going badly. While I strongly advocate for a mix of targeted plus the mainstream, the mainstream will only work if one is monitoring. One has to monitor the mainstream policies to check if the needs of the disadvantaged group are being met in a mainstream policy.

With regard to the specific policies in areas, they would target the specifics of Traveller disadvantage, for example, broadband hubs, which were mentioned by Ms McDonagh, facilitating working from home for groups, places to study, childcare where people live, support for parents to support children doing homework and support for parents on the value of education. Even if they do not have it themselves, it is valuable and a good thing to have. Staying in school is a good thing to do. I mentioned earlier additional supports rather than separate institutions for training. There may be benefits there for the other people, the non-Travellers, who are engaging in the training so they see what Travellers and a minority group can do. That is a hidden advantage of having the training. However, if very disadvantaged groups such as Travellers are going to be brought into any mainstream service, that is where one needs to watch that their needs are being met.