Ms Kate Duggan:

About 65% of those will be referrals relating to welfare concerns. They will not be on foot of concerns in respect of our child protection or care system. We have strengthened our family support and early intervention services in the 17 Tusla areas. All of those services are open to members of the Traveller community. Regardless of whether they are services that are parent led, services for children, family resource centres, homework clubs or school clubs, members of the Traveller community can access them. We recognise that sometimes Travellers do not want to access them and that there is a stigma around their accessing them. That is why we have some dedicated funding.

As we said, the family link workers only work with Traveller families that have children under five years of age. The object is to try to support parenting capacity, support early intervention and ensure that those units and family units can stay together and there are not welfare or protection concerns.