Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality, I very much welcome the opportunity to contribute to the statements on this very important and truly historic declaration. I wholeheartedly welcome the Taoiseach’s announcement this evening formally recognising, on behalf of the State and on behalf of the Irish people, the reality that the Irish Traveller community constitutes a distinct ethnic group.

From the outset, the new Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality identified the recognition of Traveller ethnicity as one of the issues it wanted to address in its work programme for 2016. The previous committee of the Thirty-first Dáil produced a report on this issue in 2014, with a key recommendation that the State recognise the ethnicity of the Traveller community. However, this had not materialised and the current committee was very keen to keep this issue firmly on the political agenda. We believed that further address followed by a new and complementary report would inject a new impetus into the case. The issue was given even greater poignancy by the Carrickmines tragedy of 2015 that resulted in the death of ten members of the Traveller community and we remember them and their grieving loved ones here this evening.

Representatives from the Irish Traveller Movement, the National Traveller Women’s Forum, Pavee Point and Mincéirs Whiden came before the committee to share their experiences. I acknowledge on behalf on the committee, in particular, Martin Collins and Ronnie Fay, Bernard Joyce, Jacinta Brack and Maria Joyce and Thomas McCann. They are all very special people and I know that this is a very special day in all their lives. Molaim iad. Well done. Ms Emily Logan, Chief Commissioner and Mr. David Joyce, commission member of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission also came before the committee to give evidence. The committee also heard evidence from Ms Anastasia Crickley, Chairperson of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and from academic and Traveller rights campaigner Dr. Robbie McVeigh. I would like, in Anastasia’s absence, to remember her late partner John O’Connell who, with Anastasia, was a co-founder of Pavee Point.

I understand a number of those whom I have mentioned are in attendance and again take the opportunity to express my gratitude on behalf of the committee to all the witnesses who attended our public hearings to give evidence. Their contributions greatly assisted the committee in this important piece of work.

Many of those contributions were deeply moving, and the committee heard evidence from several speakers of how Travellers and other ethnic minorities can internalise a sense of oppression, with terrible consequences for their communities. For example, Mr. Bernard Joyce, on behalf of the Irish Traveller Movement explained:

One particular advantage to ethnicity recognition is the opportunity to enhance community esteem and address internalised oppression. Internalised oppression which supports the notion that the majority community is right, superior and the standard, leads to poor self-image, low self-esteem, a lack of pride in one’s cultural identity, stress, depression and in some cases alcohol and drug abuse. It can cause low expectations both of ourselves and of our community.

The point was reiterated by Thomas McCann of Mincéirs Whiden about the damage that internalised oppression and shame has done to the Traveller community:

Many Travellers, as a result of being told by their teachers and by the media, feel from the day they are born that they are failed settled people. That is the message the State has given to all Travellers. The State is saying that actually, the culture is not a valid culture, that really a Traveller is a failed settled person. We cannot have full equality for Travellers until Travellers are recognised as an ethnic group.

These sentiments have been repeated time and time again by Martin Collins of Pavee Point.

Based upon the hearings and broader consideration of the issues, the report that we produced contained three recommendations. The first was that the committee was of the view that Travellers de factoare a separate ethnic group. This is not a gift to be bestowed upon them but a fact the State should formally acknowledge, preferably by way of a statement by the Taoiseach to Dáil Éireann. The second was that the committee strongly encouraged that this step be taken and at the earliest possible time in 2017. The third was that the Government should then conduct a review, in consultation with Traveller representatives, of any legislative or policy changes required on foot of the recognition of Traveller ethnicity.

Travellers clearly have a shared history, culture and language, as well as their own customs and traditions that are recognisable and distinct. They share all of the essential characteristics of an ethnic group identified by Lord Fraser in the British case law. In any case, it is self-evident that they identify as an ethnic group and are seen as a separate group by others.

From an academic perspective, Robbie McVeigh, in his evidence to the committee, explored in more depth the issue of Travellers and ethnic identity. He argued that all of the elements that make Travellers an ethnic group in Britain and in the North of Ireland, including the essential characteristics of an ethnic group such as a long shared history and a cultural tradition of its own, hold in this State, and all the evidence suggests there is no good reason for Traveller ethnicity not be recognised here. He stated:

[In] all the time I have been working on this issue, there hasn’t been a substantive case made against Traveller ethnicity ... [T]his reality suggests that the continued prevarication is a political act based on assertion rather than an examination of the evidence. It is not a position which stands up to legal or sociological scrutiny. Indeed, it is intellectually frustrating that the case against Traveller ethnicity is so rarely and so poorly made. From this perspective, the ongoing prevarication on Traveller ethnicity looks particularly ill-judged.

Fundamentally, recognition of Traveller ethnicity is about respect and inclusion. We had hoped that our report would add impetus to the issue and today we can honestly say we have not been disappointed. We have clearly come a long way since the report of the Commission on Itinerancy in 1963. In its report, the commission concluded:

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.

Dear, oh dear. How wrong can one be?

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