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

Go raibh maith agat. I commend Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn for proposing this motion, and also the excellent work of Traveller groups like Pavee Point, the Irish Traveller Movement, Minceirs Whiden and the Traveller Women's Forum. Brigid Quilligan made an important point yesterday that Travellers were completely absent from Leinster House. It would be very encouraging if the next Taoiseach were to appoint a member of the Traveller community to the Seanad to begin to change that.

It is important that we as a people challenge prejudices and racism in everyday life. After the Carrickmines tragedy in which five children and five adults lost their lives, I thought maybe we would see an outpouring of humanity by settled people towards Travellers, or at the very least towards this family. Instead, we saw hatred, bitterness and casual racism rear its ugly head across a section of the settled community. It underlined the day- to-day marginalisation of Travellers by wider society and the challenges we face.

It was the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately. In the weeks that followed, we saw middle class, settled people protesting against the housing of an orphaned child because he was a Traveller. Then we had the Taoiseach and a senior Labour Minister speaking of Travellers as if they were second class citizens who could not be trusted to wake their loved ones in well-worn Irish tradition. It is time we faced up to this bigotry at a community and an institutional level. Travellers have a distinct ethnicity, with a language and a culture that must be respected, supported and cherished because they are every bit as Irish as you and me and the communities we represent. They are part of our rich heritage and will always be part of our future.

They, like all citizens, have a right to a home. Many Traveller families have moved out of their communities because of a lack of accommodation and have been placed in private rented accommodation, receiving rent supplement or rental accommodation scheme payments. Local authorities have deliberately abandoned their role in providing Traveller accommodation. Many halting sites have been left abandoned by those charged with their management and the people living there must put up with awful, inhuman conditions. These conditions are a threat to the health and safety of the residents and played no small part in the deaths at Carrickmines.

Over ten years ago Dunsink Lane, which served as a vital link between Finglas and Castleknock, was blocked off with boulders by a large force of gardaí. Some 300 men, women and children were isolated in a cul-de-sac by these boulders, placed there without consultation or discussion. It was a decision taken by politicians along with the local authorities of Fingal and Dublin city.

I warned these people against such measures and stood against them and with the people. They thought they could wall off Travellers from the rest of the community and forget they existed but they were utterly wrong. That blockade remains. Traveller children have grown up with barely a memory of when their home was not blocked off from the rest of the world - a constant reminder that they are not accepted and that they are less than us. We must take the hand of the bigoted or populist politician or county official out of the delivery of Traveller accommodation. We must act against councils that refuse to house Travellers and support those that will. In time, we must form an agency that is directly responsible for Traveller accommodation on a national basis and will combine expertise and knowledge to best provide for the Traveller community and support it to flourish as a distinct group as well as being part of the wider local community.

The tragic deaths of ten men, women and children from the Traveller community in Carrickmines should have been a turning point. It should have given pause for reflection on the part of the settled community regarding its treatment of the Traveller community. Instead it was another excuse for some to spew their hateful bile on comment pages and Facebook feeds. For others, it meant little at all. There was no national day of mourning, official or unofficial. In Wexford, pubs stayed closed as a mark of disrespect. The Connors, Gilberts and Lynches were treated in death as they were treated in life - as less than us and as people to be suspicious of.

We can change this horrible climate of bigotry and distrust but it will not come with well-meaning statements. It will not even come just by well-meaning people challenging casual bigotry. It will come when we begin to reform our society to cherish all the children of the nation equally.

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