Mr. Hugh Friel:

I thank every last one of the Members for listening to our submissions and research on our community and the issues faced by our community. In my opinion, the all-Ireland health study is out of date. There is an epidemic within our community - certainly in Donegal and it is transparent throughout the country - that mental health is at a crucial stage. As a men's health and developer worker, I had this discussion one day that I could name five or six people eight or nine years ago who had alcohol addictions but now I can name 50 people who are on drugs. That transition happened within the community because drug addiction was hidden. If people were addicted to prescription medication or other illicit drugs their addiction was hidden within the community. Now the issue is exposed everyday when one talks to individuals and young people. The issue is transparent in all of the Traveller organisations in terms of the younger generation. I never knew my grandfather and granny, which is the experience of many Travellers because their grandparents died at a young age. As a Traveller man I am expected to live until 65 years. It is deplorable to think about early mortality in terms of the younger generation of Travellers between the ages of 16 and 30 years. As alluded to by Ms Quilligan, people have expectations at 13 years. That is not unrealistic for Travellers because we are job smart, education smart and street smart at the age of ten or 12 years. Our life is compacted into us having a lot more pressures as young people. We have all of these things stacked on top of us from the ages of ten to 14 years and are expected to have the brain of a 30-year old. As Ms Quilligan alluded to, that is why young Traveller men and women talk about apprenticeships.

I sit on NTRIS and, as I have said, everyone's language must change around the expectations of Travellers because people think that Travellers are inferior when it comes to employment, education and health. The settled community get bursaries from the State to handhold Travellers but we do not need such assistance anymore. There is a bit of that but certainly we are a people who are well educated in terms of advocating for our rights and have the ability to go forward, which is why we are here today.

A cohort of people in university in Dublin and in colleges in Donegal need that apprenticeship model going out of colleges and need a helping hand or stepping stone from the State to make them job ready because they wonder after they have done the junior and leaving certificates and spent five years in college doing social and health care what the State will provide for them. Apprenticeship is what the State can do. There are Travellers who are well educated and job ready. Any Traveller I engage with and other Traveller organisations all say the Traveller comes to Traveller organisations that run men's and women's development programmes to socialise because they are not allowed to socialise anywhere in society due to the discrimination and racial profiling they face. We are not allowed to go into cafes if there are three or four of us together. We sit there wondering if we are going to be put out. We cannot go to a pub or a venue to socialise. That is why I say we need role models in every sector of the State that Travellers can look to and say there is one of us in there to make a safe space.