Ms Maria Joyce:

I would like to start by thanking the committee for the opportunity to speak here today. I am the co-ordinator of the National Traveller Women’s Forum, NTWF, which is the national network of Traveller women and Traveller women’s organisations from across Ireland. As a representative organisation, we engage in policy forums at national and international level to ensure that the needs, concerns and issues affecting Traveller women are understood and addressed.

We have been asked to talk on the issues impacting the Traveller community related to child protection and family support. The protection of Traveller children and young people and the fulfilment of their needs are paramount for the community, and the Irish State has a legal and constitutional duty to protect all children. It is important to understand both the historical context and systemic challenges that continue to face the community. The 1963 Report of the Commission on Itinerancy stated that the forced separation of Traveller children from their parents was an oft proposed "solution of the itinerant problem". To quote from the report, this was "based on the belief that a separation of parents and children would result in the children growing up outside the itinerant life and that thus in one generation the itinerants as a class would disappear." The starting point of attempting to understand the deep fear of State child protection services must begin here and must also acknowledge the grave injustices that were committed against Traveller children and their families. We cannot forget the deeply ingrained racism that Irish Travellers have faced, and continue to do so, and how this informed policy development.

Up-to-date data concerning Traveller children in care or Traveller families engaging with family services and or family courts is not readily available, but it is acknowledged by the services and from the experience and work of local Traveller organisations that Travellers are over-represented in care settings. While Traveller children represent less than 1% of the total population, an internal Department of children study from 2019 found that 12% of children on Tusla’s child protection notification system register were Travellers. While we are informed that efforts are being made within Tusla to move towards an ethnic identifier in line with the public sector duty in their gathering of data, no ethnic identifier is currently being applied consistently across the organisation.

When Traveller children leave care settings, they often face a profound loss of cultural identity, leading to feelings of shame, isolation and stigma. Kinship care, where a child is looked after by a relative, is a vital and deeply embedded practice within the Traveller community's extended family structure. While Tusla has increased its emphasis on kinship care and provided targeted resources through the National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy, NITRIS, to boost foster families so that more placements can be made within the family or the community, much work remains to be done. According to HIQA reports, a significant gap still exists, and we are interested to hear Tusla's plans to improve these efforts.

Building trust between Tusla and the Traveller community is essential to fulfilling Tusla's core mandate. While we acknowledge some of the positive steps - like the national working group, local collaboration with Traveller-led initiatives and the work with family link workers - this proactive engagement must be sustained across all levels of Tusla. This shift from a purely reactive approach requires a systemic, top-down commitment to ensuring real, lasting impact for Traveller children and their families. Child protection and family support work with the Traveller community must be grounded in an understanding and respect for Traveller culture, family structures and ethnic identity. This involves creating a model where the Traveller community is not just a recipient of services, but a partner in their design and delivery.

We need to immediately implement a system to collect and publish disaggregated data on the ethnicity of children entering, within and leaving the care system. This should use a human rights approach of self-identification to enhance the availability of child protection statistics specific to Traveller children, and also to reflect experience and ensure more effective monitoring.

We are calling for mandatory training on anti-racism and cultural competence to be provided for all staff and contracted professionals in child protection and family support, and for increased investment in preventative, community-based family support programmes in partnership with Traveller organisations. We need to implement and resource targeted initiatives to recruit and support more members of the Traveller community to become social workers, foster carers and family support workers. The State urgently needs to address the wider issues of racism and socio-economic disadvantage impacting the Traveller community, through implementing the recommendations of the National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy and improving the delivery of public services for the Traveller community including accommodation, education, healthcare and employment.

We also recommend that the committee speak to Travellers who have had direct experience of the care system and engage with local Traveller organisations to deepen their understanding of both current and historical issues. We stand in solidarity with Travellers who have called for an apology for neglect and harm caused by the State.

Again, I thank the committee for the opportunity to make this statement. We have submitted a more detailed paper that has been circulated and we are both happy to answer any questions that members have.