Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and the Acting Chairman. I thank Senator Colette Kelleher, who took the initiative to call for this debate. I thank the Minister for agreeing and being here today. I welcome the members of the Traveller community who are present to witness this today. I want to focus my comments on the big challenge that faces us. Many of the issues around cutbacks to Traveller accommodation programmes, overcrowding and a lack of cohesion in checking fire safety standards are due to a lack of political leadership right across this State. Let us be honest about it - it has been said here today - very few elected representatives are fighting proactively in partnership with the Traveller community to facilitate the cultural rights that are important to both the Traveller community and to all of us in terms of our history. I had the privilege of being rapporteur for the justice committee in the previous Oireachtas. That committee unanimously recommended that this State recognise - not grant, because it is not the State's right to grant it - the ethnicity of the Traveller people.

I refer to the virus that started. In 1963, there was a Commission on Itinerancy. I want to read into the record its terms of reference, because they say it all:

(1) To enquire into the problem arising from the presence in the country of itinerants in considerable numbers [Note how it refers to "itinerants", not Travellers];

(2) To examine the economic, educational, health and social problems inherent in their way of life;

(3) To consider what steps might be taken (a) to provide opportunities for a better way of life for itinerants,

(b) to promote their absorption into the general community

(c) pending such absorption, to reduce to a minimum the disadvantage to themselves and to the community resulting from their itinerant habits.

Those were the terms of reference. No Travellers were represented on that commission, which denied the ethnicity, culture and history of the Traveller people. That commission was a stain on the history of this State. It has haunted us for all the decades since. We decided that the Traveller community's history was to be denied and that it was to be absorbed into settled society and so-called civilisation.

I want to commend Mr. John Connors and his team on the recent series on RTE. They have made a massive contribution to educating people on the real history and the real issues facing the Traveller people. Mr. Michael Collins, Ms Sindy Joyce, Ms Geraldine McDonnell and Ms Anne-Marie McDonnell, and Mr. Michael McDonagh undeniably are real leaders to the Traveller people.

I will briefly go through the reasons all parties and members of our committee unanimously recommended that the State recognise Traveller ethnicity. It is massively important. It would reverse the harm done by that commission all those years ago. The remaining excuses that we identified were the likes of it not being in the best interests of Travellers, that granting Traveller ethnicity would be too costly to the State, that Traveller ethnicity is not proven, other academic reasons and the need for full consensus amongst Travellers. We saw absolutely in the evidence given to our committee that every one of those excuses was slam-dunked and rebutted completely, not least by the then Equality Authority and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. Those bodies are objective observers that have written extensively on this issue. The weight of academic, anthropological and sociological evidence is overwhelming. In the next while, there will be deliberations on this State recognising the ethnicity of the Traveller people. I believe that any fair and objective person who watches the documentary series laid out by Mr. John Connors or who reads the all-party unanimous report that has been there for two and a half years would have to accept that this needs to happen.

I thank the Acting Chairman for his patience. My final point is we need to do this together. We need to send a collective political message. All political parties and Independents in these Houses must send a message together that the report of 1963 was a stain on the State. We need to begin a new journey together, right the wrongs, teach the history of the Traveller people in our schools and remove the denial of their history, contribution, culture and vibrancy in this State. It is not going to be easy and there are major problems to overcome. However, the recognition of ethnicity would be a massive step in that direction. I urge the Minister, along with his Cabinet colleagues and others, to look at this issue and make this year - the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising - the last year in which the State denies the ethnicity of our wonderful rich cultural Traveller people.