Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank all of the contributors for their contributions to this debate. In five years' time, we need to be able to say that the percentage of Travellers who are unemployed has decreased. In other words, if actions do not lead to results, those actions are not good enough. It is as simple as that. What strikes me from today's debate is that the approach must be multifaceted.

I was on Galway Bay FM this morning. Keith Finnegan was reading out the questions and comments. One of the comments made a few times was inevitably that Travellers do not want to work. I have heard that before but not about Travellers. When I was a child, I heard that Connemara people would not work. I think that view has been disproved. Given an incentive, most people want to work and do work. We should therefore dismiss this as a valid argument.

I was particularly interested in one thing on which Dr. McGann touched because I am a member of the Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands and we are, at the moment, preparing a budget submission. She said that there are disincentives built into the social welfare code. I am interested in her view as to how that could be changed. There are lots of things in the social welfare code I would change. I will be pushing for lots of change. What are these disincentives? Is means testing one? Obviously there has to be a social welfare code. I certainly would not be in favour of disimproving it in any way because most of us would find it hard to live on what people who are in receipt of social welfare get. What are those disincentives and how could we improve on them? There are possibly very simple things we could do. When I started working and was employing small farmers, I certainly came across many disincentives that were quite bizarre. Some still exist but we have managed to improve in respect of others over the years. I am interested in Dr. McGann's view on that.

I was very interested in what Ms Costello had to say. I am interested in the idea of taking very specific actions this time. Would Ms Costello agree that one of the best ways to break down prejudice is to get Travellers into work so that people get to know them intimately as workmates and find out that, like everybody else, they are not so different? Would she therefore agree that, regardless of all our courses and talking, unless we get a significant number of Travellers into work, we will not really overcome people's underlying prejudices? The best way to overcome such prejudices is for people to become friends and workmates with people from communities they find strange. In that way, they become people they trust. Would she agree that there are some places in which such recruitment will be easier than in others? An example is the public sector. We should focus big time on that. Ms Costello was involved in setting up the social enterprise in Galway, which has been very successful. Unfortunately, it was difficult to achieve the contract for the insulation. It immediately did what a good business would do; it reformed itself and came back again stronger than ever.

Do the witnesses feel that more of these schemes around the country and a programme administered by the Department of Rural and Community Development could play a significant role in creating a bridgehead into other types of employment and, again, that people would get used to services being provided by people in the Traveller community?

There is the Criminal Justice (Spent Convictions and Certain Disclosures) Act 2016. Are employers still looking for records? Is there a massive prejudice against anybody with a record? Presumably, somebody with two, three or four convictions is in an exponentially worse position. Do significantly more resources need to put into interacting with people during the first time they go to prison so that they do not go back to prison and thus do not create a double jeopardy for themselves?