Professor Amanda Haynes:

The good practices we identify are those that should be universally established in any judicial system or policing practice. They particularly relate to procedures which involve giving voice to people, allowing them to speak, listening to them and treating them fairly and with respect and dignity. I remember one of the most striking quotes from our Traveller interviewees.

The interviewee said they were spoken to "like a human being", not like a Traveller. The experience stood out in the person's memory because it was not the common experience. The common experience is to be treated as "less than" or the "lowest of the lowest". These are both direct quotations from interviewees. The difficulty concerns the extent of the required practices, which should be embedded in any judicial system and in policing and which are probably experienced by many members of the Irish population. The statistics show that, in general, our population has quite a good relationship with the police and, to a slightly lesser extent, the courts. There are quite high levels of trust in both, but that is not translating through in the treatment of the Traveller community. This means we need equality data. If policies are not being implemented coherently and consistently in practice, we have to be able to track it, identify it and deal with it. That means equality data must also relate to complaints. Complaints about mistreatment and poor treatment will also be important in pulling the system back into line and making it accountable to those not receiving the same service and access to justice as everybody else.