Ms Maria Joyce:

It is really important to have the targets and the quotas, and to be namingTraveller women specifically in them. Unless we specifically name Traveller women, sometimes the issues impacting them will not be addressed. We need ethnic quotas in gender quotas. We also need, within those nested ethnic quotas, targets for Traveller women. Otherwise, political parties will not go the extra mile that they need to do in ensuring the efforts are being made by the parties and the resources and time being put into it. The political and cultural shift that needs to change within the political parties and the State will not happen unless we have the naming of Traveller women specifically in the context of quotas and targets. As the Deputy said, there is over-representation of Traveller women in prison, while we have under-representation across all of the issues we have discussed today. That does not happen by accident.