Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I would make two points. There was research done. It was part of a 30-year study carried out by Fr. Micheál Mac Gréil, who was a sociologist, in three sections. The last book was published in 2011 or 2012. Basically, Fr. Mac Gréil was funded, and he was doing that book, to look at two groups. He did every group in society but he had a chapter on Irish language speakers and on Travellers. What he found out was that top of the social acceptability scale are Irish language speakers. Nobody objects to them living next door. One might say that is self-evident, but it is not so self-evident as it might appear.

If the Irish language had not become an official language of the State and had not been sociologically important to the new State, then Irish language speakers would have been peripheral poor and could have wound up in a very different place. It is very interesting how something done for national and linguistic reasons also had a very positive sociological effect. The most distant group in all the measures Fr. Micheál Mac Gréil researched was found in response to questions on how people would feel about a member of one's family marrying into the Traveller community, living next door to a member of the Traveller community, and so on. Fr. Micheál Mac Gréil covered all those issues. It is in a published work on prejudice and intolerance in Ireland, Pluralism and Diversity in Ireland: Prejudice and Related Issues in Early 21st Century Ireland.It is worth it because it is a very detailed study. He also wrote about the vicious circle of poverty creating conditions to create, in turn, exclusion, things going around in a circle all the time and how to break it. It is replicated in this context.

The other aspect is that there is a Bill moving to Committee Stage soon, I am told. It is a Bill the Cathaoirleach brought through before. She might outline the detail of it because she was involved in promoting it.