Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I recognise the significant work he did in this area during his term of office.

On the 149 actions under the NTRIS, only two have not been started. Therefore, there have been significant advances. All the others have been commenced. I just do not have the figure for how many are fully concluded but I will write to the committee after this meeting to give a breakdown, indicating the two actions that have not been started yet.

On the specific point on the education pilot programme, we have decided to extend the programme into a third year because Covid had a very significant impact on its operation. I am aware from my engagement on the NTRIS and with a range of Traveller NGOs, with whose representatives I have regular one-on-one meetings and whom I meet at Traveller events, that there is genuine concern across the community about the impact of Covid and the attendance of Traveller children in schools. Particularly when schools reopened in September 2020, there was a very significant drop-off in school attendance. The remote schooling that worked so well for most families across the country probably did not work for the vast majority of Traveller families because they did not have laptops and unhindered access to Wi-Fi. That is a major issue, including in the community.

The Out of the Shadows report, which I spoke about, very much acts as a baseline study of the five areas in which the pilot has been commenced. It was published recently. I hope it will be the subject of analysis and debate. It will give us the baseline from which to measure the success of the pilot initiatives. There will be an evaluation but it will take place after three years because Covid affected the operations so much.

The Deputy is correct about data. This issue will be difficult. It has now been identified in so many other areas. For example, the national anti-racism committee, established at the end of the term of the last Government and which is bringing forward the national action plan against racism, identified in its interim report the lack of ethnicity data as a key facilitator of racism in the country, because we cannot measure the impact of policies or their absence. In a range of areas, the lack of information has been identified as a key problem. I hope, therefore, that we can have developments in this regard. Given my background, I am passionate about statistics and using data to drive good policy. That is why I believe it is important to have a policy on ethnicity data.

The mediation service is a brilliant resource. It and the Traveller Counselling Service are both, in their own ways, absolutely fabulous at helping to deal with conflict within communities. We will continue to support them. We were able to give them a little bit of extra support in the form of dormant accounts funding at the end of this year.

My officials have just texted me to say 16 of the NTRIS actions have been fully completed. We will write to the committee with a full breakdown of the figures following this meeting.