Ms Maria Joyce:

I will add to that and try to cover a couple of other points the Deputy made. If the opportunities are created and supports as required - not everybody may need them - are put in place, you will get uptake. If that is sustained over a period, there will be uptake. Travellers have gone into third-level institutions since the 1970s and 1980s under not easy conditions. I went back as a mature student with a young son to Maynooth University and spent four years getting a degree in the early 1990s. There are other Traveller women who have gone in as mature students to try to access those avenues in third level. We see more and more that where opportunities are given, more transfer where young Travellers are getting through the second-level system into third level. We still need more supports from a wider perspective. Put them in place and create the opportunities and there will be uptake.

I echo a couple of the Deputy's points in relation to the suicide rate in particular. Travellers are living with appallingly high suicide rates. The statistics are probably way below what they are.

For Traveller women, it is six times higher than the national average while for Traveller men, it is seven times higher than the national average. Based on the data we are going on, which is outdated, 11% of Traveller deaths are based on suicide. When we look at the younger profile of suicides, this is more younger people dying than need to. If we look at some heartbreaking examples of suicide in the community involving very young children, we can see that it is indicative of a system that is failing them. One of the things I did not mention when I spoke about the wider education piece is the bullying that takes place in educational settings not just from their settled peers but from teachers as well or the lack of action or accountability around it. That is a significant issue. I cannot sit here and say for definite because the data has not been collected in a disaggregated way from an ethnic perspective but I would imagine that care leavers are caught within that trap in terms of higher suicide rates. Unless we have the proper data to be able to look at proper responses and supports, that will increase. Suicide rates are coming down in the wider settled society but they are going up in the Traveller community. This is telling us that something is very wrong. It is not the community that is at fault for that. It is the wider lack of infrastructure and support. The Deputy spoke about accommodation and how critical that is, particularly when one is looking at it from a welfare perspective. We are looking at overcrowded conditions, disproportionate numbers in homelessness services and lack of Traveller-specific provision. For over 20 years, year on year, local authorities have been failing to deliver their targets for Traveller accommodation programmes when their targets did not even meet the need to begin with, never mind projected needs where the needs of young people would be captured.

There are more foster parents in the settled community with whom Traveller children are being placed. They are being treated well but it is outside their culture and way of life. If that resource was turned into the community in terms of trying to keep it a community-based response and supports within the wider family, it would be money well spent in the context of keeping children within their own culture and way of life.