Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

In the first place, I should be clear about what I will deliver. It will only be headlines in the context of any given country. A one-week visit by me and my team, along with desk research, will not do anything other than complement the work that this committee is doing. I hope it will also help to focus attention on the most fundamental issues in terms of the focus of our work. I agree with everything the Deputy has said.

First, on mental health, I simply echoed back to the committee what a Traveller representative said to me. It was not the mental health of women being referred to - it was the mental health of the entire community - but the fact that women are well placed to work on this issue. By no means am I suggesting that women only are confronted by these issues. All the graves I visited at the graveyard in County Limerick were of young men.

On the question of housing, I am also from Galway, so I know exactly what the Deputy is talking about. The issue with housing is exactly as the Deputy has said; it is about letting people live in the kind of house they want to live in. I have met a number of Travellers, not just now but previously, for whom having space to keep a horse is an important part of their cultural identity. I keep coming across an attitude that sees the horse as a problem, rather than as a positive expression of who Travellers are as a community. I fully accept that not everybody wants to have a horse. Just one last-----