Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Just the one, yes. There are two of us present out of a party of 37 Deputies. Deputy Barry can work out the percentage. There are not many Deputies in general present in the Chamber.

I thank former Senators Colette Kelleher and Grace O'Sullivan and Senator Ruane for introducing the Bill in the Seanad. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for agreeing to set up an Oireachtas joint committee to deal with issues relating to the Travelling community when he was asked to do so by former Senator Colette Kelleher after a discussion I had with her regarding the need for such a committee. We agreed that, given the significant number of issues faced by the Travelling community, unless there was a dedicated committee within the then existing structures in Leinster House, we would never get around to dealing adequately with the myriad challenges that community faces. I thank Deputy Pringle, with whom I have co-operated on other issues, for bringing the Bill to the Dáil. I thank the Minister for the decision that the Government will support the Bill, which is vital to getting it through the House.

I first became interested in the Travelling community while I was a student through the inspiration of Micheál Mac Gréil, a Jesuit who made it his business to live with Travellers, to get to know them and to speak about the significant challenges they face. That was not today or yesterday. When he wrote his last book, detailing prejudice and tolerance in Ireland, I had the great honour to be asked by him to write the foreword to the book. It is interesting he dedicated his whole monumental work and the whole span of prejudice and tolerance in Ireland to Ireland's Travelling community and then, after a hyphen, wrote "Ireland's apartheid".

I often wonder whether the State reflects the attitudes of the people, or if it is the other way round and the State dictates attitudes to the people. In many ways, the reality is that in a democracy, the State reflects the views of the people. Unfortunately, when it comes to Travellers, those views are negative, discriminatory and have serious consequences. Having had to read the book to write the foreword, looking across the whole span of all the different prejudices and intolerances, the one thing that jumped out at me was that the general public attitude to the Travelling community was the most negative of all. For example, I believe the figure was 18% of Irish people believed that Irish Travellers should not have Irish citizenship. Looking at all of the other sociological indicators, they are all on the negative side. We will only change these attitudes by education and by informing people that the Travelling community is a community with a long tradition and history and a deep culture.

I believe it was Thomas Davis who stated "Educate that you may be free". I hope that with this Bill we will educate all the young people of Ireland so that they may be free of intergenerational prejudice towards a very important indigenous community in this country.

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