Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What we need to ensure is that this practice is clamped down on because sometimes there is a perception that Traveller children cannot compete like with like. Obviously, when a person is from a Traveller background, he or she is nearer to disadvantages in accommodation. I will come back to that in a minute. I will mention the education of the parents. There are a few very educated parents who can give more help with homework. There is an expectation on parents. There are out-of-school activities that children from better off backgrounds can get involved in and so on.

I will always remember one thing that struck me really forcibly. I was visiting a halting site about an accommodation issue and I was in a caravan. There was a young lad of primary school age doing his homework in the caravan. I could not understand how he was continuing to do the homework quietly in the corner with all of us talking around him. I certainly could not have done it. I just could not get my head around it. I went over and started talking to him and asked if I could look at the homework. He was doing the kind of fairly standard mathematics a kid of ten or 11 would do. I started checking and everything was perfect. It was perfectly neat and correct. This child was inherently very clever, but look at the huge disadvantages he faces. That is why this committee is focusing so much on the accommodation issue. That is very important, however, because the spectrum of inherent ability among the Traveller community is the same. In my view, however, that has not always been the perception society has had and even that the education system has had.

I dealt with a case many years ago when I was Minister. A parent who was Traveller woman came to me - no anecdote might be appropriate, but I think this is a little bit more than an anecdote - and asked whether her child had a right to learn Irish. I said, "What?". I asked her what she said. She asked whether her child had a right to learn Irish. Most people will tell us they do not want their child to learn Irish. I was Minister with responsibility for the Gaeltacht at the time. I said that, of course, everybody has a right and that, in fact, it is a core subject in the curriculum. Obviously, somebody in the system decided that Traveller children would have no use for Irish.

I accept there is very good work going on in the Department. I am not trying to say the Department is in any way part of this attitude, but there is or has been - it is a thing we have to open up - a pervasive view that full education through secondary school and the same opportunities if people want to go on to third level is not a realistic aspiration for everybody. Everything we are all trying to do here to kill that is so vital. We have been given a very detailed brief by the Department. I will be suggesting that we discuss that brief at a private meeting, go through it in detail and come back to the Department because it is very useful and we need to look at it in detail ourselves.

One issue was raised. I was responsible for the revitalising areas through planning, investment and development, RAPID, programme, which were the really disadvantaged areas in the State based on a statistical analysis of disadvantage. One conclusion I came to was that one big differentiator between a child from a more advantaged background and one from a disadvantaged background - this was not focused on Travellers only but people who came from disadvantage - was access to after-school activities, whether it is sports, dancing, music and all those things. I know they are not direct school responsibilities and, therefore, educational responsibilities, but they have to be somebody's responsibility in all this talk and discussion that is taking place. My view is that if children are involved in sport or other disciplined activities, they are more likely when they come to school to buy into the concept of organisation and discipline and they want to learn. Has any work been done to try to see the correlation between educational attainment and after-school, post-school or extracurricular activity? If there are data on that, it would be very useful for us to seek funding from other Departments to make sure that these activities are afforded.

Deputy Stanton wanted to come in.