Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Kelleher for raising this issue. No doubt this is a challenging and complex area. As the Senator will be aware, in June-July of this year the first National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy was published and the education committee within that has met in the intervening period. The strategy involves, as the Senator stated, a number of important education elements. At a general level, it proposes the need to support in areas including education, employment and economic development.

The Senator raised the issue of the extent the Traveller population has participated in the fall in unemployment from 15.1% to 6.1%, which is a dramatic improvement. I do not have data on that. The Intreo offices of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection has been very successful. It was one of the successes under the former Minister, Deputy Joan Burton, that the work of the then Department of Social Protection was reoriented to help develop the unemployed to get into employment positions. Long-term unemployment is now down to 3%. We have been very successful in that area. I do not know to what extent Travellers have benefitted from that change, but certainly the focus of that policy is to assist the unemployed in finding pathways back into work.

Another element was to ensure that the curriculum resources gave consideration to the culture and history of the Traveller and Roma population for use within the education settings and work is under way on that by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA.

In the area of SOLAS and the ETBS planning for the needs of disadvantaged groups, including Travellers, that is very much a part of what is being done. As the Senator can understand, with unemployment very high, there was a huge emphasis on delivering a scale of opportunities. Now there is greater focus on identifying needs and pathways and ensuring that those programmes are of benefit. The latest figures I have show that there are 500 persons who declare as Travellers who are in programmes such as VTOS and Youthreach, and those programmes have in the past reported very good impact. We will be conducting a review of each of them shortly. We will look specifically at their success in bringing along groups, such as the Traveller and Roma groups, and successfully finding pathways for them.

The other area was to focus, in particular, on attendance. A two-year pilot programme is being initiated, mainly driven by Tusla, which is responsible for the home school liaison and the school completion policies. That two-year pilot programme will target attendance and participation by Traveller and Roma children. It will involve the appointment of additional home school liaison teachers and other supports to try to achieve high levels of attendance and completion. As the Senator correctly stated, there is a real problem with the fall-away as Traveller children progress through the education system. I attended the recent meeting that the former Taoiseach held in the context of the recognition of the ethnicity of the Traveller community and there was uniform support for education as being a key gateway. This pilot programme has built on the work there and it will be very much embedded with the Traveller community to try and achieve a big step up in the participation.

Another element obviously is trying to address what the Senator correctly pointed out was a very poor level of third level participation, with only roughly 1% of the adult Traveller population having third level education. Our performance framework for the higher education system has for the first time included an explicit target for enrolment of Traveller students. Obviously, we will be looking to see if can we use the programmes that we have rolled out, which include particular college bursaries worth €5,000 for 600 students from non-traditional backgrounds, as a gateway for Traveller students to come through. We have, as the Senator will probably be aware, a call out to the higher education institutions at present to develop their access policies and we will be keen to see that there are explicit attempts by the third level sector to ensure that its access policies include Traveller student.

There is work in progress and there is new policy being developed, but I share the Senator's view that this is an area of very substantial challenge. The figures for education progression are, as the Senator correctly states, dismal and they are ones that we have to address. There is a determination in the committee that has been recently established in the education area to progress that.