Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I apologise to the Minister for our delayed start. Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is quite a mouthful. I thank the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and welcome him to the meeting. Before we hear from him, I suggest that we publish his opening statement on the web. Is that agreed? Agreed. Based on the evidence given by witnesses appearing before this committee since our first meeting over two years ago, including Traveller representatives, and visits by this committee to a number of Traveller accommodation and halting sites where we met many Travellers at their homes, it seems that the conditions that Travellers have to endure are far from ideal. The National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy 2017-2021, NTRAS, was launched in June 2017 to address some of the issues faced by Travellers. It represents a whole-of-government approach and encompasses themes such as cultural identity, education, employment, health and accommodation, all of which are relevant to this committee. We will be very interested to hear what happens next.

I invite the Minister to make his opening statement after which we will have a question and answer session. We will try to keep everybody to five minutes as we go along to get in as many questions as possible and finish within the suggested time of one hour.