Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Senator Flynn and commend her, Deputy Ó Cuív and all other members of the committee on their important work. I am delighted to get a chance to talk about this report on the key issues facing the Traveller community. I will quickly commend all of those who work in the Blanchardstown Traveller Development Group who have been on the ground working with vulnerable families and individuals, providing food parcels, personal protective equipment and support throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

Just before the pandemic, Councillor Breda Hanaphy and I, along with Colette from the Blanchardstown Traveller Development Group, went around and visited the Traveller sites in Dublin 15, the Dublin West area. I challenge any Minister to visit these sites and see the conditions people are living in. To say they are appalling would be an understatement. For a Traveller community, "temporary" means 20 years or more. I will focus on one site I visited, located at St. Brigid's Lawn, which is ten minutes away from my house. There is a litany of issues there, including emergency health and safety issues and other long-term issues. St. Brigid's Lawn is on Porterstown Road in Clonsilla. It has been 30 years since the residents were moved from a site on Grove Road in Blanchardstown, which is ironically now the site of the head offices of Fingal County Council. Following long and difficult negotiations, a limited number of issues have been addressed but others have not. The day units are nothing short of a disgrace. The overcrowding on this site leaves it a Carrickmines tragedy waiting to happen.

These families live in St. Brigid's Lawn, which is covered in the Kellystown local area plan. In the coming years, 1,000 new houses and apartments are to be built along with schools, community facilities and sports facilities. I tried to use the local area plan, and Councillor Hanaphy tried to use the county development plan, to ensure that, when Kellystown is being developed, the existing extended family currently living in St. Brigid's Lawn, who are exceptionally well-integrated into the community, would be given the opportunity to continue to rear their families in their home area. How many extra bays will be allocated to St. Brigid's Lawn? One. They are being given a space the size of a couple of car-parking spaces in a development of more than 1,000 units.

I would also like to address the issue of educational attainment in the Traveller community. Over my years working in the school completion programme and Youthreach, I have seen the desire of so many from the Traveller community to stay in education but the hurdles they face are absolutely immense. One of the cruellest cuts made during the austerity, which still gets to me, was the complete removal of every single visiting teacher for Travellers. The whole scheme was completely abandoned. Along with other measures such as the 37% cut to the school completion programme, of which I was part, this had an absolutely devastating impact on Travellers' involvement in education. It again showed how quickly the Travelling community is kicked aside.

I endorse the call for a national Traveller mental health strategy. The figures for suicide among the Travelling community are absolutely beyond comprehension. Some 56% of Travellers reported poor physical and mental health as opposed to 24% of the rest of the population. Some 67% of men and 59% of women reported that their mental health was not good for one or more days in the past 30 days. It is clear that this report comes at a very important time but it is just another in a litany of reports. The most important word we need to hear with regard to this report is "implementation" 84 times.

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