Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ireland is proud of its place in the world. It is a nation, almost alone in Europe, which since the first formation of its nationhood has owned no slaves, colonised no land, divided no peoples. This is only half of Ireland's story. Ireland has a great shame that it denies. The great stain on this nation's character is the grave mistreatment of a small but significant population of Irish people who are members of the Traveller community. Travellers are regarded by a large proportion of the population as being acceptable targets for hatred, derision, slurs and discrimination. The slurs directed at the Traveller community are commonplace among all sections of Irish society just as the N-word would have been in the white society of Mississippi in the 1960s.

This casual hatred is no different from racism - I accept that it relates to Irish people of a unique and distinctive ethnicity - and it infects our culture. Although passive in most individuals, it gives cover, comfort and inspiration to those who wish to do physical harm.

On Sunday night a number of cowards filled with hatred set out to burn to the ground the home allocated to a family with ten children. They did so having failed to force Donegal County Council to refuse to house the family in question purely because its members are Travellers. I commend Donegal County Council and others, such as that in Kilkenny, which have not bent to pressure in the context of attending to the housing rights of citizens. Those to whom I refer carried out this heinous act in the aftermath of comments made by two councillors in the area. The comments in question can only be branded as being anti-Traveller and racist. Councillor Sean McEniff stated that members of the Traveller community should be sent to Spike Island and that they should be housed in isolation or segregated. Councillor Eugene Dolan backed up the comments made by his colleague. To date, no actions of censure have been taken against these individuals who are supposed to be leaders in their communities and who represent two of the parties in this House. It is shameful that Deputy Martin and the Taoiseach did not take action in respect of the comments made by the councillors in question.

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