Mr. Liam Herrick:

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. I thank the committee for the invitation to appear. Traveller and Roma communities in Ireland remain two of the most discriminated-against groups in our society. Consequently, the lived experience of Travellers and Roma is persistently at odds with the basic expectations of living in a wealthy European country. Substandard accommodation, homelessness, poor health outcomes, poor educational support and poor access to essential services and even to justice are all persistent realities that members of those communities face throughout their lives. In a country that prides itself on being progressive and based on human rights, progression of rights for Travellers remains staggeringly slow.

Over the past year, Ireland has engaged with several international human rights mechanisms of relevance to Traveller and Roma rights. IHREC has contributed extensively to those processes. In June 2025, during Ireland's eighth review under the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW, that committee endorsed our call for a resourced and integrated national Traveller and Roma inclusion strategy, co-ordinated with the National Strategy for Women and Girls. It also called on the State to address systemic issues for Traveller women, such as low educational attainment, employment barriers and limited access to healthcare. The CEDAW committee issued strong recommendations on access to justice, noting research previously supported by the commission that highlighted structural obstacles to legal redress, and the over-representation of Traveller women in the prison system. The absence of civil legal aid in discrimination cases was specifically criticised by that committee. In July of this year the Government completed its review of the civil legal aid system and we expect it to bring forward proposals for reform. Lawmakers, including members of the committee, should avail of the opportunity to scrutinise developments in that area when the Minister for justice brings forward his proposals.

A second international monitoring mechanism, namely, the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, also issued an opinion in February of this year. It reiterated our concerns about the lack of legal recognition for Travellers and Roma as national minorities and the need to repeal laws that criminalise nomadism. That Council of Europe committee called for urgent legislative action on accommodation, equality data and reform of hate crime. On the latter point, hate directed at Travellers remains a serious issue and Travellers and Roma are consistently identified as those groups in society towards which the worst public attitudes prevail. We ask the committee to encourage the Government to progress its commitments in the programme for Government to modernise the Incitement to Hatred Act 1989.

In that regard, we note comments by the Minister for justice just last week, which indicated a different approach to that which was committed to in the programme for Government. Ireland was scheduled to submit its sixth national report to the Council of Europe framework convention on national minorities by 1 September of this year, but at the time of speaking this deadline has been missed. We hope that report will be submitted shortly.

Turning from international bodies to domestic legislation, we wish to draw members' attention to two specific issues of law reform. First, and most urgently, we have consistently called for section 19 of the Intoxicating Liquor Act 2003 to be repealed. This provision excludes uniquely licensed premises from the jurisdiction of the Workplace Relations Commission, which deals with all other discrimination cases. IHREC has long highlighted how this unique delegation of the cases to the District Court undermines access to justice and is inconsistent with the European Union’s race equality directive and the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. We warmly welcome reports that there is an intention to include in the general scheme of the equality and family leaves miscellaneous provisions Bill measures to enact this repeal. However, delay in progress in this area undermines victims’ rights to an effective remedy and signals a lack of urgency in tackling entrenched discrimination.

As a second matter of law reform, under the EU standards directives, the State is obliged to ensure equality parties including IHREC, as Ireland’s national equality body, are accessible and available to all people. Articles 12 and 13 of those directives place direct responsibility on the State to resource and enable access, especially for marginalised groups such as Travellers and Roma. This includes not just physical access to our services but outreach information dissemination and legal literacy. We urge legislators to scrutinise how these obligations are being fulfilled in practice and to ensure budgetary and operational alignment with EU law. We note that members' colleagues in the Joint Committee on Children and Equality are considering legislation in this area.

Finally, to turn to our own work in this area, over the past 11 years, the commission through its section 40 function to provide legal assistance has provided and continues to provide legal assistance, advice and representation to a significant number of Traveller clients. The biggest cause of complaints in our work is in the area of accommodation. Not only are Travellers consistently denied culturally appropriate accommodation, but they are often left living in conditions not fit for human habitation. Our legal team has represented many Traveller families, including disabled people, elderly Travellers and children, who are currently living in or adjacent to landfill sites, without electricity or running water and often subject to rat infestation and other pests. The scale of discrimination faced by Travellers is such that it has become one of our legal team’s biggest areas of work. We have addressed the systemic dimension to this discrimination, not only through representing individual clients but also through exercise of our equality review power, focusing on the drawdown of funds for Traveller-specific accommodation by local authorities.

A third area of our work relates to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission's worker and employer advisory committee, which has recently completed work on developing a guide for employers on inclusive employment practices for Traveller and Roma. We will be publishing this guide next month. I note the initiatives that have also been taken by the public service in this area to the Traveller and Roma placement programme, which the committee heard about at one of its previous meetings.

In conclusion, as this committee knows and as it marked at one of its previous meetings, we recently passed the tenth anniversary of the fire at Carrickmines halting site, in which the discriminatory barriers faced by Travellers manifested in the most horrific of tragedies. Ten years on, in our view, discrimination against the Traveller community is as persistent, systemic and wide-ranging as it was then. I refer to the words of our friend and colleague the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, Michael O'Flaherty, who recently stated:

We must confront the injustices faced by Roma and travellers, the racism and discrimination that we allow to persist on a massive scale. This is one of Europe’s greatest human rights scandals. [Traveller and Roma] voices are strong and clear, and we must finally listen to them, respect them, and act on their demands for equality and justice. The time for indifference is over.

In that regard, IHREC greatly values the work of this committee, and we wish to support its work and assist the committee in any way that we can through this meeting and in its ongoing and continuing work.