Mr. Patrick Nevin:

That is what I mean. The legislation that has impacted detrimentally on Travellers needs to be reversed. Those three pieces of legislation must be looked at seriously if the State is to take the impacts on Travellers seriously. The State needs to look at those, and at the trespass legislation in particular. We used to be a nomadic people, but it is now essentially illegal to be nomadic in this country. That is the truth of it.

There needs to be real investment. We need to get away from platitudes and small amounts of funding. We need together to look at what has happened, and this process must include Travellers and Traveller representatives on an equal footing.

The root of the word "ethnicity" is the Greek word ethnos, meaning people or nation. I would argue, as would many Travellers like me, that we are a nation in a nation and have been since the foundation of this State, but we have never been given the resources or the investment required to enable us to play an equal part in society. There are quite a few Travellers who would agree with me on that. We need and deserve our place and our recognition. I studied Irish history in college. Unless we take this seriously and acknowledge the wrongs that have been done to Travellers, we will perpetrate the same wrongs on the new communities. We are witnessing some of that now, which is what makes this so serious. We need to acknowledge what has taken place in recent weeks and the potential for it to get to another level.