Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

On the specific issue of strategies in education such as homework clubs, I do not have anything that I could usefully add now.

Around education in general - this is a Europe-wide observation stretching well beyond the EU - I want to say that we still have to take account of the impact of Covid on children and on their education. I have not been researching this specifically in the context of Travellers in Ireland. In the EU setting where I worked previously, however, we saw huge problems with the Roma community in that children were asked to do learning from home in a context where never mind their not having online access, they did not even have electricity. I have to assume that there were aspects of that here in Ireland as well. These children did not disappear. They are still trying to work their way through the school system right now with that added disadvantage.

On the general population, there was limited work done by my former agency, the Fundamental Rights Agency, on attitudes of the general population to minorities, minority issues and minority groups which generated conflicting results. On the one hand, there is an openness towards decency and respecting human rights in our society to a degree that was encouraging but, on the other, when people were asked - not this committee but in the EU setting - if they would be willing to have a Roma neighbour or allow one of their children to marry into the Roma community, the figures were very low indeed. That is the only research around the general population of which I am directly aware. There could be academic material that I have not had access to. What I can tell the Deputy is that the research and sociology repeatedly show that the more people know about another group the less afraid they are of the other group.

On investment in the context of building up awareness, I mentioned education but there is a job of adult education also to be done, of positive messaging in society, that would bring great benefits.