Professor Jennifer Schweppe:

In more recent times, anti-Traveller racism has become the last widely acceptable form of racism in Irish society. People use anti-Traveller language as normalised racist language. When politicians, gardaí, the media or any public representative uses anti-Traveller rhetoric it is not challenged. It is often not challenged by other politicians because it is impolitic to do so due to the high levels of discomfort that Irish people have with Travellers.

I move to the second part of the Deputy's question where he asked about research that has been done within An Garda Síochána. Dave McInerney, the former head of the Garda racial, intercultural and diversity office, GRIDO, conducted that research a couple of years ago. I think it was published in 2020. He found that gardaí who had contact with members of the community had a much more favourable view of Travellers than those who had no contact. Where we see a community as distant and different from us, we think of them as different. We have completed a public attitudes survey in the European Centre for the Study of Hate, which measures social distance across a range of community groups. It will come as no surprise to the Deputy that the levels of absolute discomfort with Travellers from the general population are relatively high compared with other community groups. We do not have time to go into the details, but we would be happy to provide that data.