Ms Kathleen Sherlock:

On behalf of Mincéirs Whiden, cant for "Traveller talking" and Ireland's only all-Traveller forum, I thank the committee for the opportunity to come here and speak today and for its ongoing commitment on the hearing of key issues relating to Travellers.

We know from the census that Traveller unemployment is over 80%, which is unemployment on a mass scale. It can create no other outcomes for the community involved aside from poverty and deprivation for those who must deal with it. To understand how this is possible and how any community could be left in this position, particularly in a prosperous country like Ireland, we must look at the underlying causes, including anti-Traveller bias and racism that has been allowed to go unchecked in this country for generations. The country has been discriminating, isolating and excluding the only indigenous ethnic minority community.

The negative impact of the mistreatment of Traveller communities is all too evident. As a community, we are dealing with multiple crises. For example, there is short life expectancy, much of which is due to poverty-related illnesses, and chronic ill-health is due to having to live in substandard and hazardous conditions. A decades-old crisis in Traveller accommodation has led to escalating levels of homelessness in our community and more recently we have seen a frightening rise in the numbers of Travellers with depression and addiction and who commit suicide. Each death leaves a painful legacy of suffering, altering forever the lives of the families left behind, including bereaved spouses and, very often, young and orphaned children.

The Irish Traveller population currently comprises fewer than 40,000 people. Bright and talented Traveller children leave school with little or no education, some barely literate, and this limits their ability to access employment. Even the few who are able to navigate the educational system and achieve educational qualifications struggle to find employment. All over the world, people see employment and education leading to better employment as routes to break free from poverty in an honest and dignified way but for the majority of the Traveller community, this opportunity does not exist. Doors to employment are closed to them because of their Traveller identity and many members of the community feel they have no other choice but to hide their identity in order to get a job or out of fear of losing a job or being subject to anti-Traveller racism in the workplace.

Anti-Traveller racism continues unchecked in workplaces. It also continues to go unchecked in the education system and in society as a whole. The result is a community in crisis due to poverty and want. A proud and once self-sufficient people are now overly dependent on the State while their skills and talents go unused and wasted. Our community is corralled in dead ends because of discrimination, low educational attainment and a lack of work opportunities. We are stuck in poverty and this leads to depression and addiction.

In some cases, people demonstrate antisocial behaviour and criminality because they see no other way out. The negative impact of this is not just on the Traveller community but on society as a whole. For decades, the elders in our community have highlighted the need for work and jobs for Travellers because they could see far off the negative impacts of not having anything to do was having, and would have, on our people with no opportunity for work or jobs. To highlight this, I will read some lyrics from a song called "Campfire in the Dark", which was written in the 1980s by Paddy Houlihan during his time in Ennis:

My father rises early and he makes a sup of tea

He lights the kitchen fire and then he calls me

His days are often empty, he's nothing much to do

So he sits and tells me of the travelling life he knew.

The song was made famous by the Fureys. The situation is far worse now for Travellers than it was at that time. Back then, Traveller men could still gather scrap and get some casual work.