Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to the Bill in a moment but I ask the Acting Chairman to allow me to thank the Minister for being on site in Artane this morning. It was very decent of him to do so. I was just coming from the school, which had suffered from an horrendous fire. That the Minister was present in person was of great comfort to the school. The school community and the children are devastated. Some of the teachers of the school are past pupils. The community appreciates the Minister's work. Perhaps his Department could work with the local authority fire officers across the country to assuage some of the fears about school buildings. I hope that, in a number of weeks, we will have a better tale to tell about the state of our buildings. At the site of the school in question, there is room for prefabs to be constructed. The school community will rally around. I thank the community for being so vigilant in informing the fire brigade the first thing this morning.

I lost my seat in the last general election and was reminded of it a number of times in the months afterwards by people who told me I spent too much time talking about Travellers. That is the kind of attitude that exists in our society. The education system reflects the State and its value. It reflects who we are. For far too long in this country, the education system has been for a certain section of society, possibly comprising a majority of society, and everybody else had to fit in. The system was not for the latter. I taught in a particularly disadvantaged school. The history, geography, mathematics and Irish books did not really reflect their experiences at all. These were not Irish-dancing children but children who liked disco dance. They did not play Gaelic games but played soccer. Their history was one of the flats, tuberculosis, lockouts, dock work and leaving school at 14. Theirs was as valid a history as any other — as valid as the history in An tOileánachor Peig. The history books did not necessarily reflect their Ireland and what they knew to be true. It felt almost as if one were trying to squeeze children to understand an official Ireland when an official Ireland did not necessarily respect, understand or even recognise them. If we do not accept this Bill, not just in spirit but in its entirety, how can we begin to imagine an education system that will embrace the African-Irish, Polish-Irish, Lithuanian-Irish and Brazilian-Irish communities? How can we begin to imagine an education system that will embrace, love and empower all those communities if we cannot do it for the indigenous Traveller community?

Senator Mac Lochlainn has spoken about this passionately over a number of years. The work of the Civil Engagement group of Senator Kelleher and others has been transformational in these Houses in getting people of different political backgrounds to come to an understanding of the necessity to move beyond where we always have been. Senator Mac Lochlainn has talked about the itinerancy report of the early 1960s, which always spoke about the Traveller issue as a problem that needs to be solved, and a problem that needs to be assimilated into what is normal as opposed to recognising what is right, just and decent, and what has an absolute right to exist and be celebrated. The celebration of a people was the whole argument about ethnicity. I thought we were getting somewhere when ethnicity was recognised by this Government, which garnered a level of celebration, but then an individual ran for the Presidency and completely and willfully misunderstood what ethnicity was all about yet secured 24% of the public vote, and one wonders. One wonders if a settled child who has never had an interaction with a Traveller child or Traveller family will get his or her information from? Will it be from the media or politics? God help us if we expect a child from the settled tradition to understand what the Traveller tradition is like if we expect him or her to learn from contemporary society, the media, politics, community and the society in which he or she lives. If that is the only avenue a settled child has to attain such understanding then he or she will just learn the prejudices, racism and wilful misunderstanding that I and most settled people grew up with. The State must take it upon itself, not as a concession or adopt a stance of "Ah, sure look it", but as a vindication of a right of a people that they are an intrinsic part of this nation and not something for which concessions must be made. Every Department needs to shift its mindset from one of this being a problem and something to facilitate. We do not have to talk about tolerance. People do not need to be tolerated. This nation needs to intrinsically understand the basic humanity of the existence of a community. Whether one hails from a flat complex in inner city Dublin, a Traveller community living on a halting site or from the place that seems to write all of the history books in official Ireland, one has as much of a right to one's history and tradition. Everyone on this island has the same right to his or her history and tradition in terms of the entirety of the nation.

We have relegated identities but promoted other identities. That makes somebody from one of the relegated identities feel that the education is not theirs, that it does not celebrate them or believe in them. Relegation makes a Traveller feel that if he or she wants to get anywhere in his or her life then one must pretend to be settled in order to get somewhere. The history books tell Travellers that the people who have led this country or performed greatly in this country and are celebrated are not like them so they must change. It is a devastating message to convey to a Traveller child aged eight, nine or ten that if he or she wants to get anywhere he or she will have to be a little less Traveller.

It is awful for parents in this country when they realise that if their children are going to get somewhere they will have to be a little bit different from what they are, that what parents have passed on to their children and in terms of the way they are being raised, these children must be a little bit less than that to be accepted. People have said that we cannot control all of that, and we cannot control the prejudices that people of a certain generation have, and I mean my generation and older. We cannot control that necessarily but we can control an element of that in the education system.

For us to consider this Bill as a concession to lobbying is a massive mistake. The people in the Department of Education and Skills should be tripping over themselves to congratulate Senator Kelleher, the Civil Engagement group and other Senators in this House and Deputies in the other House for wanting to promote the Bill. It reflects well on the Oireachtas that this is being promoted, asked for and demanded.

I suggest to the Minister that the hearts of nine year olds are easily broken and it is pretty devastating to learn that one is just not important enough because of who one is. We were in Artane this morning. The school will be rebuilt and in years to come the incident will be a bad memory. The community will get together again and things will be okay because there is enough love in that area. If one is a nine year old who discovers that because one is a Traveller and because the school textbooks and everything around the child in the school tells one that one must change a little bit to get on in life because there is nothing worth celebrating about one, and everything that one asks for is a concession from what is really is the mainstream because a person, as a Traveller, is not mainstream then that is a heartbreaking realisation to come to terms with. I would not want any child to come to that realisation.

This legislation is a lot about emotion, a beating heart and identity, which can be difficult to put into hard legalistic text. I know that the Department hates legislation because it lived by circulars for years, which is fine. This is hard legislation that seeks to underpin the identity rights of a people who are part of our nation. I shall repeat the following for the benefit of the Minister. If young children of this nation do not learn from their State-funded school - the organ of the State - about Traveller culture, heritage and to celebrate Traveller life then where else will they hear it?

The Labour Party group supports the Bill and will work with others to get it over the line. I appeal to the Minister to appeal to the better part of himself because he is a progressive Minister who believes in the right things in terms of education. I know in the cold light of day that he can improve on the amendments that he has tabled and make the Bill something that we can all be proud of.