Mr. Bernard Joyce:

To reply to Deputy Wallace, our Traveller ethnicity cannot be looked at without looking at the treatment of Travellers by the State. Ireland is a very new state in terms of independence but it is also a state that has been colonised for hundreds of years, and Travellers have lived as a nomadic group on the island of Ireland. When we look at the treatment of Travellers, we also have to look at the attitudes and the prejudices that prevail. Ireland recently introduced equality legislation but the race directive had been in place in Europe for a significant length of time. I live in the midlands, and it will take me an hour to bring myself and my five children to Newry. It is ironic that in terms of the country that I was born in, and that my father and his father was born in, Meath is our home town yet we find that the status of our ethnicity as an indigenous people is not recognised. We can go to another jurisdiction and find that there is a recognition of our ethnicity. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. We all have pride in who we are but have pride in who we are under extreme pressure. We know that some people within the community have given up, and they struggle. One can see the effects of that in terms of further isolation.

Representatives of the European Commission were in Ireland recently. I have met them, as have members present. They are also asking the Irish State, as are others, why this issue has taken so long.

There is an underlying institutionalised prejudice and racism and you cannot take one without the other. The State has a long way to go. I do not see this recognition as the silver bullet that will address all of the other issues. I see it as part of a process whereby when we engage with the State, we engage on an equal footing with members - even Deputies - and that they are not looking at Travellers as somehow being failed Irish settled people, because we are not. I grew up in a time of segregation when schools were separated. I was put into special classes and was given different times. I struggle with that, even today, because that type of treatment was unacceptable. Why did that treatment happen and why were we growing up on the roadside without facilities and without access to supports? I do not claim to be a leader but what brought me in to this is that I do claim to be a person who wants to address the wrongs of Ireland. I feel very proud of being Irish but I feel very strongly that part of this is being an Irish Traveller. It is who I am and is in my DNA. It is important that this is a political decision not for one Member or one party, it is a decision that has to be made, as Ms Maria Joyce has said, by Dáil Éireann. I would take great confidence and sense of pride in being Irish if that decision was made. It is not about how long is a piece of string, it is about when that decision would be made. That is fundamentally why we are here. We would like to see a timeline put onto this process.