Seanad debates

Wednesday, 17 October 2018

Traveller Culture and History in Education Bill 2018: Committee Stage

 

10:30 am

Photo of Lynn RuaneLynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support this amendment to capitalise the "t" in Traveller. We also need to capitalise Travellers in general in terms of their knowledge, their understanding and their contribution. We need to acknowledge their cultural and social capital and the history they have brought to Ireland.Today I heard the comments of the presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Casey. I do not want the debate today to focus on him but his comments signified the ignorance that still exists in this society; that he felt it was okay to make those remarks. If we were talking about people of another race or ethnic origin, he would be called quite clearly a racist. We need to come out very strongly and say that his remarks were clear discrimination and racism against a very important part of our community and society.

The reason the Bill is so important, and why it is so important for me as someone who is not from the Traveller community, is that I can understand my own history because our history is Traveller history too. I teach in NUI Maynooth on a Monday. It is an Access programme which allows students to enter and diversify the teaching profession. It was the former Minister, Deputy Bruton, who introduced the funding for the PATH 1 programmes and this comes under that programme heading, which is a really important initiative.

I realise that I must have internalised something because of my lack of education around Travellers. What I internalised was a fear of talking about Travellers in a setting, or a fear of attempting to tell their story for them. This became really obvious to me in the past few weeks because I have a young Traveller girl in the class and when we are talking about oppression, poverty and lack of education, I have not once said the word "Traveller". Why am I afraid to say the word "Traveller"? This is something that should be celebrated but I am afraid to draw attention to this wonderful young girl in the classroom. That comes out of some fear inside me of what may happen if attention is turned to her and she is on her own in that classroom and nobody else understands the history, culture and importance of her presence in that room. We as teachers and politicians have missed out. Travellers not only miss out by not being able to be fully active in society, but we miss out by not having Travellers fully participate in our society. We are missing out by not having them in that space with us.

When I heard Peter Casey, I thought of the four county councils who put their weight behind him. Are those four county councils going to come out and completely reject his comments on the Traveller community? They should do so. Every Senator in this House that has connections with those local authorities should be standing up also and rejecting his comments and ask their county council to reject his claims, the discrimination and the hate cited by Peter Casey.

I hope the new Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, will be a champion of this legislation. We have recognised Traveller ethnicity and that is for nothing if we do not have policy initiatives. These policy initiatives are the least we can do in terms of making it up to the Traveller community. The State destroyed the Traveller community and its participation in a way of life. It destroyed their identity and rejected them. We forced Travellers into situations where they had to descend on cities and could not travel or carry on their identity. We forced them to reject their identity. We owe it to them to not only introduce legislation to reject any racism that comes from any person with a public platform-----

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