Mr. Christopher McCann:

The question about the level of knowledge of the Traveller legal service among the wider community would be difficult for me to answer, not being a member of the community and not being on the ground. I emphasise that when the Traveller legal service was established, the premise adopted for how it would work was that we would seek to bring strategic litigation. That is to say that we would seek to bring litigation where the result could potentially be a judgment to enforce or clarify a law or something of that nature. The result can then be used by the wider community or relied on later. The reason for setting the service up in that way is that it is a small service. If we are to be a service for the whole Traveller community, which it is in a certain sense, subject to the need to bring strategic litigation, we would not be able to cope. That is why, in our opening statement and evidence, we have really emphasised the need for reform of civil legal aid. There is a clear amount of unmet legal need but it is at a level which our service could never address alone. In our view, the only entity capable of doing so is the State. Relying on philanthropy to fill a social gap like that is unsustainable.