Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend Senator Kelleher and the Senators who supported her in bringing forward this timely and very important Bill. On 10 October 2015, in awful circumstances, ten members of the Traveller community lost their lives in a fire. Five of them were children. Soon thereafter, I looked at a report on the events published on the journal.ienews website. Below the article were several comments such as "rest in peace". Hundreds of citizens of this State gave those comments a thumbs down and disagreed with comments expressing the wish that five children and five adults who were burned to death in the most appalling circumstances would rest in peace. That attitude is evil. It is a serious problem and we have ignored it for too long.

All those in the Chamber and listening to the debate have heard phrases such as "dirty knacker" and "dirty tinker" used in polite society. None of us could deny that. I was once at a GAA match and, after a tackle was made by a defender, a woman behind me screamed at the player "You dirty knacker. You dirty tinker." I turned and saw that she was the type of woman who one would assume is an upstanding citizen involved in her GAA club and a decent person in every way except in the attitude displayed by her words. How did our society reach this stage? Such attitudes are evil and racist. From where do they come?

The briefing given by Senator Kelleher draws our attention to the work of the psychologist, William Ryan, who in the 1970s wrote a book Blaming the Victim. The briefing outlines that the book addresses the situation whereby members of a dominant community see features of the social life of a marginalised community that are the result of poverty and marginalisation as essential features of that community's culture and use that observation to justify racist attitudes that cause the cycle of poverty, exclusion and marginalisation to be perpetuated. I could not have put it better myself. From where has this come? What does it say about our society that the woman behind me who I am sure is quite decent in every other respect said something like that in front of children and others around her?

The roots of this issue go very deep but I will point to the role of the Commission on Itinerancy in 1963. When the justice committee of the previous Oireachtas tasked itself with looking at the issue of Traveller ethnicity, it brought in a range of witnesses. I was the rapporteur for the report. I am proud to say that we recommended on an all-party basis that the State recognise the ethnicity of the Traveller community. However, we were deeply shocked when we examined the Commission on Itinerancy. No Travellers were on the commission or participated in its work. It was about Travellers but they did not have any say. The terms of reference decided upon in 1960 were to inquire into the problem arising from the presence in the country of itinerants in considerable numbers, to examine the economic, educational, health and social problems inherent in their way of life, to promote their absorption into the general community and, pending such absorption, to reduce to a minimum the disadvantage to themselves and the community resulting from their itinerant habits. It goes on to state that itinerants, or Travellers, as they prefer to be called, do not constitute a single homogenous group. It denied Travellers their ethnicity, history and culture without any academic, anthropological or sociological evidence for so doing. That is at the root of where we are today and why the Bill is so important.

We must reverse the attitude engendered by the Commission on Itinerancy. We must teach our children that our Traveller community, similar to native Americans, Maoris and Aborigines, were indigenous to this land and continued with nomadic ways while the majority of our people settled and decided they wished to have a roof over their heads and live in one place. The majority rejected the old ways and rejected people who continued with the old ways to such a degree that that report was written in 1963. The report has been consigned to history by the recognition of Traveller ethnicity last year but we cannot stop at that. The declaration by the former Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, on that famous day last year means nothing unless we bring in legislation such as that proposed by Senator Kelleher. I cannot overstate how vital it is. There is no point discussing Traveller health, mental health and education until we value the Traveller community and its contribution to our history.

My mother was born on the side of a road in 1951, the child of Traveller parents who went on a journey to move away from their roots. While I was a child, my grandmother, who I loved dearly, tried to move away from her Traveller background and settle, like so many other Travellers, because it was so difficult to live in that community. It is wrong that she and so many other Travellers felt under such pressure. I owe it to my grandmother who was nearly forced to deny her past in order to be accepted in society and to make a better life for me and her daughter, my mother, to tell her story. Travellers watching these proceedings owe it to those who came before them to tell their story and of the injustice they faced. We must be honest and tell those stories in our schools because the only way we can learn from the mistakes of the past is to accept that they were mistakes and move on from them. We will never turn around the fortunes of the Traveller community until we say it is valued and that its contribution to our country is immense, core and central. Its music and nomadic ways are part of who we were and who Travellers are and will continue to be with our support and love. That is the only way to stop hundreds of people from going onto a news website and giving a thumbs down to a message hoping that five children burned to death will rest in peace.