Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

During 2013 the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality held a number of hearings on the issue of the State recognising the ethnicity of the Traveller community. In compelling testimony to the committee, Brigid Quilligan, director of the Irish Traveller Movement, stated:

Through generations, where we were once a strong, proud people – and for some part still are - we have been devalued within society. Never before in my lifetime have I seen such hate as I have seen in the past five years. If one opens a newspaper or turns on the television, if one is in a shop or on a train, if one looks at Facebook, Twitter, thejournal.ieor anything at all, anti-Traveller sentiment is fired at one. As Travellers, we experience this in our daily lives and we try to set about changing that by making people aware of us and by working in partnership with people.

The devastating tragedy at Carrickmines and the response of a significant minority of the people can only have reinforced the deep concern of Brigid and all of the 40,000 men, women and children that make up the Traveller community across the island. The ugly racism of some towards the Traveller community reached a new low after the tragedy at Carrickmines. The fact that hundreds of citizens gave a thumbs down to expressions of sympathy to victims on the website thejournal.ieis deeply disturbing. Their hatred blackens their heart so much that even to the burning to death of ten human beings - ten Irish citizens, five of them children, one of them a pregnant mother - there is an empty shrug of the shoulders.

How did we get to this point? The first major policy report in the State on Travellers was that of the commission on itinerancy in 1963. The commission was established in June 1960 and the publication of its report three years later established policy on Travellers for the following 20 years. It is one of the most shameful reports in the history of the State. If Members want any evidence of its agenda or views, the four terms of reference for the commission are all that they need to look at. They were: (1) to inquire into the problem arising from the presence in the country of itinerants in considerable numbers; (2) to examine the economic, educational, health and social problems inherent in their way of life; (3) to consider what steps might be taken to provide opportunities for a better way of life for itinerants and to promote their absorption into the general community and, pending such absorption, to reduce to a minimum the disadvantage to themselves and the community resulting from their itinerant habits; and (4) to make recommendations. They were dripping in racism and elitism and everything abhorrent to the 1916 Proclamation. It is ignorant; it is stupid; it is ill informed, yet it forms the basis for the hatred we see today.

I say it again that human beings, citizens of this State, went online and gave a thumbs-down to the expression of sympathy to ten human beings who were burned to death in the most appalling circumstances.

The language used in the terms of reference of that report was instructive as to the State’s ideological approach to the Traveller community at that time. It is also instructive that no representatives of the Traveller community sat on the commission. In its report, the commission asserted:

Itinerants (or Travellers as they prefer themselves to be called) do not constitute a single homogenous group, tribe or community within the nation although the settled population are inclined to regard them as such. Neither do they constitute a separate ethnic group.

It reached this conclusion without any apparent explanation or evidence provided. In its 2013, 50th anniversary review of the Commission on Itinerancy report, the Irish Travellers Movement pointed out that in chapter 6 of the report, the commission states: "as it was not essential to the consideration of the Commission’s terms of reference, no special study was made of the origins of the itinerant population of this country." The commission stated that it was aware that “a period of long research” would be needed to answer this question and stated that this was a job for “trained historians”.

Despite these acknowledgements, the commission resolutely rejected the ethnicity of Travellers. There was no historical, sociological or anthropological basis; it was just prejudice and racism. That was our society. That is what set the scene for the following decades. That is the virus that infects too many of our citizens in this State when the look at the Traveller community.

The approach and recommendations found in the 1963 report of the Commission on Itinerancy remain deeply offensive to Travellers and are largely rejected by modern-day Ireland but the insistence by the State on not recognising the ethnicity of Travellers remains. Following our hearings the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality recommended the following:

Step 1:

That either the Taoiseach or the Minister for Justice and Equality make a statement to Dáil Éireann confirming that this State recognises the ethnicity of the Travelling community.

Step 2:

That the Government then writes to the relevant international bodies, confirming that this State recognises the ethnicity of the Travelling community.

Step 3:

That the Government build on these initiatives and commence a time-limited dialogue with the Traveller representative groups about the new legislation or amendments to existing legislation now required.

Tonight's motion calls on the Taoiseach and the Government to implement these recommendations immediately. I acknowledge that the Minister of State, Deputy Ó Ríordáin, has been a genuine friend to the Traveller community and a supporter. He was in attendance when we launched the report. I know he is advocating, but it needs to be delivered. I suppose I am not speaking so much to him but to his Government colleagues, to members of the Cabinet and senior departmental officials to do the right thing.

I want to outline why our committee made its recommendations. I want to put on record the relevant sections of the report:

This State has maintained a position for decades that amounts to ethnicity denial without having presented any evidence-based defence of this position to our international partners and indeed the Travelling community.

As part of our committee's deliberations, we examined a number of the excuses or concerns that are there to block this as we could interpret it. They are that it is not in the best interests of Travellers; that granting Traveller ethnicity would be too costly to the State; Traveller ethnicity is not proven; academic reasons; and the need for full consensus amongst Travellers.

We examined every one of them and dealt with them through the hearings we held and the visits to the Traveller community in different locations throughout Dublin. We found no legitimacy to any of the concerns. There was a 100% clear case for the recognition of ethnicity. In particular I acknowledge the input of Mr. Laurence Bond of the Equality Authority as it was then. He wrote a comprehensive report entitled Traveller Ethnicity back in the day. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has also written in clear terms about these matters. I leaned heavily on its findings and on the findings of members of the Traveller community who have done superb work. There is an absolutely cast-iron case that there is no justification for delaying this anymore.

In response to the first issue, that "It is not in the best interest of Travellers", we found that the representatives of the Traveller community are best placed to know what is in their best interests and the support for the recognition of Traveller ethnicity from all four national Traveller organisations and the 99% support of Travellers in attendance at the 2012 conference organised by the National Traveller Monitoring Advisory Committee surely reflects their judgement on the question. Only one Traveller present that day expressed any concern about this matter, which is comprehensive.

In response to the issue that "Granting Traveller ethnicity would be too costly to the State", the committee pointed out that cost should not be a barrier to the State doing what is right by all its citizens or act as a barrier to justice or equality. However, the committee accepted the analysis of Laurence Bond from the then Equality Authority who advised he could not see any significant additional cost to doing this but that there would be an immense impact of recognising the distinct culture, the contribution of Travellers, their language, their music, of teaching their history to children in schools, of going into community centres with the Traveller community to explain what Traveller culture is and what has its contribution been and why it needs to be cherished and sustained, why we need to have Traveller specific accommodation, halting sites.

It is because we are enriched as a people if we embrace all the diversity of the fabric that makes up our nation. We are only enriched by embracing that, cherishing that and reaching out to some of our most vulnerable citizens and saying, "You are loved and valued by this Republic", and then dealing with the issues that exist with any aspect of society.

In response to the issue that "Traveller ethnicity is not proven", we looked at this issue in terms of the ground-breaking legal cases in Britain and the fact that in the North of Ireland the ethnicity of Travellers is recognised. The only place on these islands that does not recognise the ethnicity, the distinct culture and contribution of our Travellers, is this State. We need to throw that report from the Commission on Itinerancy into the fire or the bin. We need to bury the ghost of that report and start to heal the wounds that have been there in the decades that followed its publication. We have comprehensive evidence from the legal basis in Britain and the North of Ireland with the recognition of ethnicity.

In response to the issue of "Academic reasons", the committee leaned heavily on the report by Mr. Laurence Bond. I cannot mention him and the Equality Authority enough. It was a superb analysis of the sociological and anthropological case. It was an immense contribution to the debate.

In response to the issue of "The need for full consensus amongst Travellers", nowhere in the world is it necessary to find 100% consensus. It is up to a person to self-identify his or her race. In every way it was comprehensive.

I conclude with the words of Brigid Quilligan. She said:

We are not speaking about major changes; we are speaking about people who have been on the island of Ireland for as long as anybody can record and recognition for the valuable contribution we have made to Irish society. We are talking about having our own history recorded, rather than a history that has been written for us, imposed upon us and dictated to us. We are talking about setting the record straight and supporting our people to stand tall and feel they are a valuable part of Irish society.

I know the Minister of State is on the right side of history. We just need to get his Cabinet colleagues over the line. We then need to deal with all the other issues my colleagues will mention, including the resourcing of Traveller accommodation; the need for one national body to oversee Traveller-specific accommodation because local authorities have failed.

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