Ms Anne Costello:

I thank the Chair, Senator Flynn, and members of the committee for giving us this opportunity to address it on the issue of positive action in employment for Travellers and other under-represented groups. The Travellers in Prison Initiative is a St. Stephen's Green Trust programme and is part-funded by the St. Stephen's Green Trust, the Irish Prison Service and the Probation Service. Its overall aim is to embed changes in policy and practice that will have a positive influence on Travellers in prison and their families and communities.

The committee has heard over past weeks about the stark unemployment situation for Travellers from others including the St. Stephen's Green Trust, Values Lab and the Galway Traveller Movement. I will not go through those statistics today except to say that the chances of accessing employment are bleaker still for Travellers with a criminal record. Today we want to focus on possible practical solutions to improve employment rates among Travellers. I am particularly pleased to introduce Martin Ward from the Galway Traveller Movement, who manages Bounce Back Recycling, a social enterprise employing 16 Travellers. Joanna Corcoran made a presentation on BBR to this committee recently, but Martin is here today to talk specifically about how this type of social enterprise could be scaled and replicated.

As many of you may be aware, Travellers are very over-represented in prison. This over-representation is not unique to Ireland; there is the same trend among indigenous and minority ethnic groups in many other countries. Hopefully I will have an opportunity at some other date to speak to the committee specifically on the issue of Travellers in prison, but today we are focusing on employment. When I go into the prisons, the main questions I get asked by Travellers in prison are "Can you help me to make a living to support my family when I come out of prison?", "What can you do to help me get a job?" and "Where can I get help to get work?". Unfortunately, there are some Travellers in prison for whom employment is not their priority due to other issues such as poor mental health, addiction, trauma, homelessness and other issues. I really welcome the establishment of the Government task force to consider the mental health and addiction challenges of persons interacting with the criminal justice system, and we would welcome the opportunity to work with them. In any case, in response to the requests from prisoners for help with employment, the Travellers in Prison Initiative looked at positive action measures in other jurisdictions to address this issue. We soon realised doing this research that while we are talking about this from the perspective of Travellers with a criminal conviction, our recommendations apply to all Travellers and indeed also to other under-represented groups.

What do we mean by positive action? When we talk about positive action, we are talking about things that employers, including State agencies and Government Departments, can do to increase Travellers employment in their workplace. We have identified some key factors organisations need in planning and introducing positive action measures. First, there needs to be leadership and senior management buy-in. We need "senior champions" in organisations. Organisations need to have an understanding of the issues for under-represented groups, and for this we recommend some cultural competency training, where people have opportunities to address their own unconscious biases.

There needs to be zero tolerance of discrimination and no place for derogatory language, stereotyping and so on. We need a recruitment process that is simple and easy to navigate. New employees need mentor support and support for promotion and progression in the workplace. Internships must result in opportunities for permanent positions. We have had pilot programmes over recent years but it now needs to be mainstreamed. We have had enough pilots.

Mr. Ward recently spoke on the radio and referred to the fact that there are 400,000 people working in the public sector in Ireland. He said that if even 0.1% of these employees were Travellers, we would have 400 Travellers working in the public sector. Of course, if the public service was truly representative of the population of Ireland, the number of Travellers employed in the public sector would be much higher. It is very disappointing to think that we have not even achieved this tiny percentage.

What needs to happen? The Government needs to commit to a public sector that is representative of the population. Any new public sector recruitment campaign must include provision for targeting Travellers. We need a Government internship programme, similar to those in Australia, across all Departments and public bodies. These should follow the good practices identified in our research and lead to proper jobs. These programmes need to be led from central government. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform should be the lead Department as issues of public sector reform fall within its remit. This matter also directly relates to one of the pillars of the Department's policy, Our Public Service 2020.

Local and national Traveller organisations need to be resourced to support Government agencies in undertaking these positive action initiatives. These organisations are well-placed to assist Travellers in taking part in these programmes. It is also really important that criminal convictions do not automatically exclude people from recruitment opportunities.

We know that the public sector is only part of the solution. We must also support Travellers' access to employment in the private sector, the social enterprise sector and to self-employment. We welcome initiatives and strategies such as the Irish Prison Service and the Probation Service's strategy, Working to Change, which aim to help ex-prisoners access employment. Our recommendations include doing a lot more so that Travellers in custody who are preparing for release are job-ready on release. With regard to social enterprise, Bounce Bank Recycling provides an excellent model for good practice. We need to build on this model to support the development of social enterprises for Travellers.

We need to be ambitious. We cannot be having these conversations again in five years' time. Now is the time. The solutions are there and the benefits will be felt by this generation and future generations.