Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I fully support the Bill that has been led by Senator Kelleher. As a fellow Donegal man, the Minister will appreciate this wee story. Weeks ago I found myself in Derry and Tyrone with the Cineál Eoghain, an historical organisation celebrating the Gaelic clans of the region. It was fantastic to be there going over the history, some of which was about battles and conflicts, which was very sad. We looked at 700 or 800 years of our history, from the 800s to the 1500s to 1600s. Those Gaelic clans were nomadic peoples. They were not settled people living in one place. Even when we think about the forts and monasteries throughout the country, they represent only a section of our people. The vast majority were nomadic.

What evolved in our history was that as time moved on we in Ireland adopted the European norm of having our own wee bit of land, house or settled property. However, some of our people continued with the nomadic ways and some families kept with the nomadic ways of being on the road. This was economically sustainable with tinsmithery and other sales and commerce but it hit a period of crisis. Despite the crisis, these families and communities wanted to continue with the nomadic ways. We had a tragedy in 1963 with the Commission on Itinerancy. In fairness, the State recognition of Traveller ethnicity has put that shameful report into the bin of history. Sadly, it set the scene for the problems we have today. It described the Traveller community as a problem and did not recognise Traveller history. It denied Traveller ethnicity and history and any sense of a shared language, music or culture. It did not even have Travellers in the consultation process. For decades afterwards, it was all about killing the Traveller culture and pushing the Traveller community into the settled community. That was the whole approach. It also demonised the Traveller culture.

I have told a story in the House that I will repeat today because it is very important that we call out the problems we have. I was at a football match in Croke Park and during the match there was a very rough tackle. A woman behind me shouted down to the player, "You dirty tinker, you dirty tinker". She was right behind me. I probably should have challenged her but I turned around and looked at her. She was wearing her county colours. I felt profoundly sad because I thought to myself that this was probably a really good woman involved in her community and the GAA. I started to visualise the things she probably did in her community but what she said was profoundly racist and offensive. She probably did not think for a moment there was anything wrong with it. It just came out of her, "You dirty tinker". It was something deep inside. In recent days, somebody in my company who is a good person and should know better, said, "He is nothing but a gypsy". That was the worst possible thing he could have said about this other person. I challenged him and we had a conversation about it. These are two people who said the most appallingly awful racist things about a section of our people. This is the damage being done. It is deeply ingrained. Some embraced the settled way for generations and there is nothing wrong with that life. It is an honourable life but so is the Traveller culture. Somehow we came far apart and now demonise those who come from the nomadic ways.

Here we were, a few weeks ago, in the modern-day settled community in Derry and Tyrone celebrating our Gaelic history. Deep within it is the Traveller history and the people who continued with the nomadic ways. They are the people who could not let go of moving around the country and roaming from place to place. Of course, they also took the ancient ways with them, including our language, songs, mythology and identity. This is a core part of the story of Irish history but rather than embracing it and working with it we have demonised it.

The importance of the Bill today is that we must turn the ship around. I know the Minister shares my passion for this. It is not just my passion because in recent years an Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality not once but twice unanimously passed a report recognising the ethnicity of the Irish Traveller people. We also had State recognition in 2017, which was a very proud day. The next very proud day will be when the Minister takes this legislation and works in partnership with Senator Kelleher to take it through the Dáil and get it passed. The prize will be that we will turn around the massive mistakes we have made, beginning with no better people than the young children in our schools, by teaching them our true history, which means teaching them that we have made mistakes. I applaud the Minister on the decision he made recently to keep the teaching of history on the curriculum in secondary schools. It was a very important and correct decision because if we do not know where we came from we cannot know where we are, and if we do not know where we are we cannot know where we are going, as a person famously said. History is core. We learn from the wonderful enriching part of it but we also learn from the mistakes. If we do not learn from the mistakes we will make them again. We will be doomed to repeat them.

There are wonderful things to learn from Traveller history but there are also huge mistakes that the State needs to deal with. We need to reverse this and there is no better place to do so than in our schools with our young children, so we do not have another generation growing up with this virus of racism towards a section of our own people. It is not just racism because today I have referenced two good people who made racist remarks, one behind me and one with me. They made them in ignorance because we have failed to teach the true history and reality of our Traveller people. The challenge now is to make sure we not only recognise the Traveller ethnicity of our people, and it was a wonderful day when it was recognised, but that we start to right the wrongs and teach the true history of all of our people in our schools and work in partnership with Traveller projects throughout the country so we have talks and days when we celebrate Traveller culture, perhaps once a year in schools. There are so many things we can do with this wonderful legislation that Senator Kelleher has drafted and brought here in partnership with many others from the Traveller community.

I appreciate that the Minister and Senator Kelleher are not on exactly the same page today but I believe their intentions are honourable.The objectives of both are to start to teach properly Traveller history in schools, not just to state it is something we might, could or may well do but that we are actually going to do it and that the inspectorate will make sure it is happening and that it is clear in the curriculum. The teaching of Traveller history must be encouraged and resourced by the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Justice and Equality.

We might not reach total consensus with the Minister today, but when we leave this Chamber, let us make sure the Bill will be presented very soon to the Dáil and that it will be agreeable to all in order that we will have another positive, constructive day when we can right the wrongs of the past.