Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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I welcome everyone to the 30th meeting of the Joint Committee on Key Issues Affecting the Traveller Community. We have received apologies from Senators O'Hara and O'Reilly.

I remind members they must be physically present in the Houses to take part in a public meeting of the committee. I will not allow any member to take part in the meeting if they are not in Leinster House.

I welcome Professor Michael O'Flaherty from the Council of Europe. He will speak to the committee on some issues at European and Irish level that impact the Traveller and Roma communities. I suggest that we publish the submission document on our website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I will now hand over to Professor O'Flaherty. I thank him very much for taking an interest in the Traveller and Roma communities in this country. He has been in the role for only six months but in that time he has really shown his commitment to our communities. He has met NGOs and other politicians and we are very grateful to have a person who is very passionate about equality for all communities.

Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

I thank the Cathaoirleach. I am very grateful for the invitation. As the Cathaoirleach said, I was elected as the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights six months ago. Since then I have been clear that one of my top priorities in the role will be supporting the human rights of members of the Roma and Traveller communities. We are speaking about 12 million people across the 46 member states of the Council of Europe. I am on a set of missions to eight countries to get a deeper understanding of the diverse lived experiences, with a view to informing my engagement not only with those Governments but throughout the Council of Europe to do a better job of standing up for the human rights of these 12 million people who, typically, are pushed to the very edges of our societies. I have been in Ireland all week in this capacity and I have spent time in Dublin and Limerick. I am in Dublin today, and tomorrow I will visit Dóchas in Mountjoy.

I want to share some preliminary views. I will not call them more than that. I will issue a statement next week, and in a few weeks I will submit to the Government a memorandum containing more detail.

If the committee will allow them, these are preliminary observations. I felt it would have been a shame to miss the opportunity to engage with the committee.

One of the great resources we can count on is the leadership shown by Traveller women. Everywhere I have been this week, they have had the ideas, energy and strategies. In many cases, they are not sufficiently supported and empowered to lead the change on which they are clear. I have also been very impressed by young people. I met young people from Athlone who are doing important work with their peers around issues such as mental health. These are capacities we should be encouraging.

The National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy II, NTRIS II, is to be welcomed. It is wide ranging and hits all the right sectors. It is accompanied by various sectorial plans. The issue now is implementation. The on-paper planning is very good, but we must see it delivered and do everything that is possible, including resourcing its implementation.

I am Irish so I think I can talk about "us" when I make the following remarks. We tolerate a degree of racism in our society which we have to call out. It is a casual racism. I do not think it is evil but it is so deep that we are not fully aware of the extent to which it affects how we act and react. Attitudes towards Travellers, anti-Gypsy sentiment and other related matters are bred from that casual racism. That is not just my impression. These are the repeated findings of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, which I used to lead.

In the context of casual racism, there is also a breakdown in trust with the Garda. One side says one thing and the other says another thing, but the fact is that the trust is very poor, which leads to many issues and problems. There is very high perception in the Travelling community that there is ethnic profiling. The figures found in the access to justice research carried out by the University of Limerick are almost identical to the figures for the perception of ethnic profiling found by my former agency, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. That cannot be a coincidence. There is much we can do to build that trust. A lot of work could be done with and within the Garda to build awareness and appreciation of the lived reality of Travelling communities and to promote cultural awareness and sensitivity. There is a practical issue. We would welcome it if the Garda were to disaggregate its gathered data by ethnicity so we can, once and for all, specify Traveller-related issues in a way that is not currently the case due to the lack of an ethnic disaggregation.

I will move to education. It is important to get behind the undramatic concept of the reduced timetable and to appreciate that, in effect, it means no education. How an earth can you get an education if you are only in school for an hour or two at most per day? A massively disproportionate number of Traveller children are subject to a reduced timetable compared with others in the community. That indicates there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

The mental health situation of the Traveller community needs to be addressed as the crisis that it is. We celebrated Traveller Suicide Awareness Day this week. I went to a cemetery in Limerick and unveiled a plaque beside a tree that the Travelling community got permission to plant in the graveyard as a testament to those who have died by suicide. One in 11 deaths in that community is caused by suicide. That needs to be addressed as the urgent crisis that it is. There are many things that could be done and it is not an insurmountable issue. When I asked Travelling communities the single most useful thing that could be done, the answer was to resource Traveller women to do mental health work in their communities. That is a practical suggestion.

I will move to the issue of accommodation and housing, to which I know the committee devotes considerable attention. I emphasise the importance not only of fixing the housing situation but also of making sure that housing is culturally appropriate. I have got into trouble previously for defending the normality and correctness of allowing a Traveller who wants a horse to have a horse. That is a part of the culture. A few times this week in conversations with people from the non-Traveller community, I noted that the horse is understood as a problem and not as a positive expression of identity. That must be sorted out. We need culturally appropriate housing and must not deal with accommodation in some generic way as we would with the general community and population.

I will say a word on the Roma. Roma and Travellers are two different communities and it is important not to homogenise them as if they are the same and require the same solutions. The Roma situation needs close attention. There has been exponential growth in the population of migrant Roma in recent years. When I most recently looked at the situation, which was approximately two years ago, the official figure was 5,000. Today, the figure is 15,000 or 16,000. That is enormous growth. There are real and pressing issues, one of which relates to language. We must never forget, as we seek to support and respect the rights of these people, that a considerable number of them cannot speak English. They have enormous difficulty in accessing services. There are also issues of access to the welfare system, including in the context where many people do not have the necessary documentation. They are, in effect, stateless. That has been the experience, we are told, of a number of Ukrainian Roma who have come here in recent times.

It is encouraging that this committee exists. I express my deep respect and appreciation for its work. It is more necessary than ever that parliamentarians hold all of the actors accountable for their responsibilities, including for the delivery of the ambitious goals identified in the strategies, and maintain the necessary pressure to address the issues systematically and in a time-bound fashion. Realistically speaking, the number of Travellers who will ever be Members of these Houses will always be modest. If there is no committee of this type, there is little guarantee that the voices of the Traveller and Roma communities will be sufficiently heard where decisions are made.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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I thank the Commissioner. We will open the floor to questions and suggestions. We will start with the Vice Chairperson, Deputy Ó Cuív.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Commissioner. I listened with interest to what he had to say. I agree that the women are to the forefront and lead within the Traveller community. Anybody who works with Travellers would recognise that. They need support and opportunities. However, I must say that it compounds women's problems that there are enormous issues facing the male population. There are huge mental health issues and we all know that the interrelationships between people are far more strained where there are mental health issues. We are also aware that research has shown that people who do not have an occupation suffer higher morbidity and higher mortality, and suffer from mental health issues.

We know that activity is quite an effective cure for that. Will Professor O'Flaherty be looking at the impact that the demise of traditional occupations for male Travellers has had on the mental health of men, in particular? As he knows, traditionally many Travellers married young. In the past, women tended to be rearing families, if you go back far enough, and the income was earned by the men. When you take away the occupation of men in any society, you effectively are creating a mental health timebomb, just as you would be if you took away the useful occupation of women. Will Professor O'Flaherty be looking at that issue? To say that this is not an issue that is affecting women is to ignore the reality of the dynamics within communities and families. I have always believed there is a huge untapped wealth of inherited experience among male Travellers that we are not harnessing. We have not looked at creative new ways to harness it. They were always good at trading. They were good at recycling until the paperwork became the issue. All sorts of things got closed down. How much is it intended to look at that issue in parallel with the effects it is having on women Travellers?

Professor O'Flaherty mentioned housing. If plans built houses, not only would we have built accommodation, but we would have built castles for everybody. We have county plans, joint committees and so on. I know that if you go to County Galway, you will find that a lot of Travellers are housed in standard accommodation and are on the list in the normal way. We have a large number of Travellers whose preference is that. My attitude always is that if somebody comes into my constituency office, I will try to facilitate their preferences, but I try to make the preferences equal. In other words, you can tell someone that they have a choice, but in reality you can eliminate choice because one might be an immediate expectation and the other might be a long-distance expectation. Lots of Travellers have grown up in settled housing having never experienced living in caravans or Traveller-specific accommodation - in some cases, their parents have never experienced it - and I find that some of them want to live in an estate where there is a large number of Travellers, and some want to live far away from such estates. That happens to every group in society.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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I remind the Deputy that the commissioner is only here until 11 o'clock.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I will not delay him. This has been a challenge for politicians. We know what to do. We have tried to put processes in, but how do you make the horse drink? How do we get action on the ground from the local authorities that are charged with taking such action? To be quite honest, the delivery of Traveller-specific accommodation has been slow. We have been trying here to get every last substandard trailer that Travellers have replaced. At the moment there is a limited scheme to replace them with second-hand trailers. It is totally inadequately funded. How do we persuade the Department? It is a finite ask because there is a small number of Travellers in trailers. How do we get these small steps taken? It is not that we do not know what to do. It is not that we do not ask or pressurise, but it is not happening at either level.

Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

In the first place, I should be clear about what I will deliver. It will only be headlines in the context of any given country. A one-week visit by me and my team, along with desk research, will not do anything other than complement the work that this committee is doing. I hope it will also help to focus attention on the most fundamental issues in terms of the focus of our work. I agree with everything the Deputy has said.

First, on mental health, I simply echoed back to the committee what a Traveller representative said to me. It was not the mental health of women being referred to - it was the mental health of the entire community - but the fact that women are well placed to work on this issue. By no means am I suggesting that women only are confronted by these issues. All the graves I visited at the graveyard in County Limerick were of young men.

On the question of housing, I am also from Galway, so I know exactly what the Deputy is talking about. The issue with housing is exactly as the Deputy has said; it is about letting people live in the kind of house they want to live in. I have met a number of Travellers, not just now but previously, for whom having space to keep a horse is an important part of their cultural identity. I keep coming across an attitude that sees the horse as a problem, rather than as a positive expression of who Travellers are as a community. I fully accept that not everybody wants to have a horse. Just one last-----

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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May I interrupt the witness to mention something that I omitted earlier? I refer to a report done by the agriculture committee. When the horse industry wanted to increase the betting levy to fund that industry better, the committee said it would include such a recommendation only on the condition that everybody, including the Traveller community, would get access to that fund. In the report, which we published in late 2015 as we approached the end of the Oireachtas term that concluded in 2016, we proposed that a portion of this money would be ring-fenced to fund a horse project in every town with a Traveller population. That would allow the thing to be done legally and in a proper and safe manner that met all the standards. Does Professor O'Flaherty have something like that in mind?

Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

That was a great initiative. I apologise-----

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I am sorry; I have a final point on that. We were not talking about discretionary finance. They would have got their share of the shakeout every year from the horseracing fund that goes to Sport Ireland and so on.

Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

I am sorry for interrupting. That initiative from the committee was a valuable one. We will capture it in the report, without a doubt, because it is something that could be revisited. I will say as a final element in my response that this committee might valuably consider how the Government could be better joined up in terms of delivering its work. Many Departments have responsibilities. There is a co-ordinating Department, but it does not have any overarching authority. We have a sense across and between central government and local government that there could be a strengthened coherence. There are many models of how that could be done, but this committee is probably best placed to consider which one would work best in an Irish setting.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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I am mindful that we have just half an hour left. Will Deputy Stanton keep his input to four minutes?

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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No problem at all. I welcome Professor O'Flaherty. We previously met when I was involved in the first NTRIS as Minister of State in the Department of Justice. I was also involved in the recognition of Travellers as an ethnic group in Ireland. He may recall that we made a declaration to that effect in the Dáil a number of years ago which was widely welcomed at the time.

I have a couple of points. Professor O'Flaherty mentioned casual racism and said it is not antigypsyism. He then went on to talk about the breakdown in trust with gardaí. I will pull back a bit to the casual racism. Will he give his view as to what that actually means from a societal and sociological point of view?

It is my impression that a lot of the so-called "settled" community are afraid of the other and afraid of the Traveller, for various reasons. The National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy II, NTRIS II, talks about trying to fill the gaps between the two or build bridges between the two. It is quite often the case that when people hear about a proposal to house a Traveller family in an area, they start protesting and lobbying their politicians and their councillors. It is because they are afraid. Will Professor O'Flaherty comment on how those particular concerns could be addressed? I put it to Professor O'Flaherty that the casual racism and discrimination that flows from that at different levels has a basic fundamental foundation across the whole of society. Politicians very often reflect what their constituents bring to them, as do other agencies. This whole issue is far deeper and is not just superficial. It is very deeply ingrained in society. How do we deal with it and address it?

Professor O'Flaherty referred to reduced timetables. I fully agree. It is something I have been working on. It is very much my impression that it has been taken on board by the Department of Education to a fairly large extent and that it is not as prevalent as it was. The reduced timetable is a formal construct in schools whereby children are told they can come for a specific number of hours. More worrying to me is, if children leave the school at 10 a.m. having been there at 9 a.m. and no one takes any notice or they almost welcome the fact the children are gone and are not there, this is not documented. I am more concerned about this than the actual restricted timetable, which is recorded quite often. I have been trying to drill into that as well. The witness is right to say that, if they are not in school, it has an impact right across education and everything else. They also become prey to drugs and criminality, which was discussed at another committee I have just come from, and they are used by that element of society. Will Professor O'Flaherty comment on that?

I agree fully about the horses. Having a horse is almost spiritual. I have met some Travellers who told me that having a horse, dealing with the horse and looking after it kept them alive. It kept them mentally sane and mentally well. Professor O'Flaherty is right about the Roma as well. We need to look at that but there is a risk of combining both and we should be careful about that. Professor O'Flaherty said Traveller women are not supported enough. How would he see us giving more support? Who are they not being supported by? Is it the men in the families or is it society generally?

Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

I thank Deputy Stanton. It is very nice to see him again. I will first turn to the issue of casual racism. I could take half an hour just on that but obviously I cannot. Repeatedly when members of the Traveller community, and more generally the Roma and Travellers across Europe, are surveyed, they describe very high levels, well beyond those in the general population, of discrimination, harassment and even acts of violence. Most of this, they tell us, is unreported because they do not have the confidence to report so it goes largely unknown to authorities. A typical figure across the EU is that only one in ten incidents would get reported. This is the context of the expression of the experience of racism. By casual I am referring to the fact it is tolerated and that one can get away with it. We know it. I was born and reared in Galway and I come from the community in which you could get away with saying things about Travellers that you would not dream of saying about anybody else in society.

I agree entirely that it is deep and across generations, but what to do about it? There are a number of actions that can be taken right away. The first is accountability. People have to be held accountable for such acts, whoever they are. When those acts cross the line of the criminal law, then there needs to be criminal accountability. This is why I very much welcome the continuation of the efforts to amend the hate crime legislation. I very much hope the hate speech dimension will be addressed following the reflection that I understand is now under way. These measures are critical. Holding people formally accountable for criminal acts will be a very important element.

A second very important element will be building up a much deeper understanding of Traveller culture and how much it contributes to society. This is largely unknown, I would suggest. Very little of the story of Travellers, their culture and their contribution to society is to be found in the school curriculum. This could be addressed very easily and immediately. There are a lot of very practical things that could be done. It is not easy and it will take time; there is no doubt about it. It is very important we allow members of the Traveller community to lead in these areas, consulting them in a very respectful way and asking them what would work best in tackling this issue. It is not their problem and it is not their duty to fix it, but as the people who experience it, they have very important insights we need to take into account.

I will jump to the last question about how to support Traveller women. I do not know. We must ask them what would work best and let them lead with their ideas. That would be a very good starting point.

I do not want to say much more about horses but there is one thing. The Deputy reminded me of what a mother said to me in Limerick when we were there. Her son was taking the horse out and she said to me that the horse was keeping that boy sane. It echoes exactly what the Deputy has just said.

I entirely take the point on reduced timetables, but recorded or not, their overuse in the context of Traveller children is very worrying, for all of the impacts the Deputy has just described. We do not have segregation in the Irish education system, thank goodness, but reduced timetables are as detrimental as segregation would be if it were a feature here. It will continue to require high attention.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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Many people might differ about the segregation in places in Ireland.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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We established a horse project in Castlerea Prison whereby young Traveller men could get trained in the various skills required for that industry and get employment afterwards. Jonathan Irwin came to see me about it and we supported it at the time. It is just one example. I believe it is quite prevalent across the United States of America in some prisons where they have such projects, and my information is it is working quite well. That is just another way of engaging and helping with support.

Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

In answer to Deputies Ó Cuív and Stanton, I have heard more than once this week from members of the Traveller community that there needs to be much more investment in apprenticeships and that this would be a very important part of the pathway towards employment.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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We will now move on to Deputy Buckley and I ask the Deputy to keep his comments and suggestions brief.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach and I will keep it short. I thank the commissioner for being here today. A lot has been covered so I will not rehash it. Reference was made to school and education, but apprenticeships are vital. We have done a lot of work on this. We have spoken to developers to see how we can get people into apprenticeships and how to keep them in them. One developer suggested they be paid the third-year rate when they start so they can have a living wage and perhaps this would encourage them into it.

I wish to settle on the knock-on effect of substandard accommodation, substandard education, and substandard everything. Professor O'Flaherty referred to casual racism. There are very limited resources when it comes to mental health and nobody spoke about disabilities within the Travelling or Roma communities, which makes them totally alienated from society because there are no supports.

I am interested in the amount of work Professor O'Flaherty has done throughout his career, especially during the short few months in his current role at the Council of Europe, and how passionate he is about this. What is cool about this committee is there is no politics in it. We as a committee have engaged with so many people, and it has been an amazing journey. Professor O'Flaherty is right; the women always seem to be the strongest ones in this regard. When looking for experts, I always say not to go for psychologists or psychiatrists, but for the people who have lived those experiences. Has Professor O'Flaherty come across people who have a disability during his short time in his role? Surely, there must be zero services for them.

What he said about the tree and the plaque in the graveyard in Limerick is interesting, because we have a tree of hope in Leinster House in recognition of those who died by suicide. We also have one in Midleton. It is about getting acceptance, although maybe not normalising things because sometimes things such as war can be normalised and it is not a good idea. I am very interested in Professor O'Flaherty's take on the disabilities and mental health because mental health cuts across everything regarding this issue.

Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

The issue of disability certainly has come up repeatedly during the week, both physical and mental health issues. We had the opportunity to meet with people living in an impossible situation because they are living with a disability in completely inappropriate accommodation. We met one person, for instance, who had the most enormous difficulty accessing a caravan because of the absence of steps, and that person had a disability impacting on their legs. This phenomenon of what has been termed intersectionality needs to paid very close attention. It is the interplay of all the disadvantage experienced as a Traveller with a disability or some other feature in life. On a short visit like this, Deputy Buckley will understand it has not been possible to do an in-depth examination of all of these issues. I would not have much more I could usefully add at this point other than to agree with the Deputy.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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This committee was set up in 2019 by Colette Kelleher, some of the members present, Oein DeBhairduin, along with organisations. Since then, we have examined numerous inequalities such as education, health, mental health, accommodation and employment. We made 83 recommendations in our report in 2021. To follow up on what Deputy Buckley rightly said, this committee is not about politics or banging heads but about looking at what we can do to ease the burden on the lives of members of the Traveller community in Irish society. To the best of my knowledge, only three of the recommendations have been implemented. Thankfully, one of the recommendations implemented was about employment. The Irish Traveller Movement now has a full-time employer working for the Traveller community and apprenticeships. I want to note that.

When we speak about horses being part of Traveller culture, horses have saved many Traveller men's lives in Ireland. The World Health Organization states that having a horse is really good for people's mental health. It is important we understand the importance, not only for the culture, but for our mental health crisis, and that for some members within our community, horses can and do save people's lives.

The primary healthcare workers Professor O'Flaherty met in Pavee Point and the women he met over the past week still have not got their €1,000 payment from the State for working as primary healthcare workers during the pandemic. These are women with chronic illnesses. If they earn more than €300 or a certain wage working in an organisation, they are no longer entitled to their medical cards. Yesterday, I was at a briefing by the Asthma Society of Ireland. A lot of members of my community have asthma or other chronic lung diseases. If they exceed the threshold of being entitled to their medical cards, they are out so much money, it is not worth it for those who have lung or chest problems to get their inhalers and medication. One of the recommendations, which will probably get slated by the media for my even suggesting it, was that women who are primary healthcare workers providing this vital work in our communities should get value for money for that work, not half-assed payments, meaning no disrespect. They are working twice as hard as their settled counterparts and earning less money for that work. One of the recommendations made by Pavee Point two years ago, which was slated by the media, was to make sure the Traveller women who work in these organisation can have their medical cards due to chronic illnesses, etc. It is not looking for handouts, but about letting women do mindful work in our community, that their medical cards are not taken away from them and that they get good money for the work they do. The Department of Health has not paid the €1,000 to Traveller women who worked as healthcare workers on the ground during the pandemic. They went into houses, worked with families and directed families where to go. Travellers working in primary healthcare were treated badly, as we saw during the pandemic.

The All-Ireland Traveller Health Study was done in 2010 with the Traveller community. Again, a lot of Traveller women led on that. That is the only study we have to go by, even regarding Traveller mental health. We believe the suicide rate in the Traveller community is more than the six times higher than the national average in the figures. Every 11 deaths within our community are caused by suicide. We would say that figure is much higher nowadays. We need wrap-around supports and mental health training for Traveller men and women to become counsellors to work within our own communities. In the programme for Government, we were promised an allocation of good supports and a ring-fenced budget for Traveller mental health. Unfortunately, that has not been followed through in the past four and a half years. I welcome the budget announcement of €23 million for Traveller accommodation. Again, the media will pick up on this. That does not get drawn down, and we do not see that as a community, apart from being attacked on the streets or told we are getting this and that from the State. What we see as a community is absolute failure by this State to implement appropriate and safe accommodation.

Today is the anniversary of the Carrickmines fire, where ten people from my community died. The State have not and will not take responsibility for it. The fire broke out in one unit and spread in a matter of seconds, taking ten lives. People are being packed in like sardines in halting sites.

The position with accommodation has got worse for the Traveller community in the past few years. Since Carrickmines, it has been used as an obstacle to keep people off halting sites. Speaking of the fire and putting up walls, many halting sites are like prisons. There is a lack of implementation, even in the context of the 84 recommendations that we made as a committee. It sometimes seems like we are banging our heads off a wall, but it is powerful to have the committee because we have had some small wins.

On the unemployment rate, over 80% of those in our community are unemployed. That is down to casual discrimination and racism. There are no penalties. It is not about putting people in jail for committing hate crimes or for being hateful to the Traveller community; it is around education. The Commissioner spoke about prison. Travellers are over-represented within the prison system. As a committee, we are looking at Travellers in the justice system.

We have a justice system in this country that is justice for the minority rather than the majority if you are a member of the Traveller community. I will provide a quote and then finish because I would like to go back to other members if possible. I remember a young Traveller man saying to me in November 2020 that he was due up in court. I told him not to worry about it because it was simple enough. I said it was his first offence. "No, Eileen", he said, "I am guilty because I am walking into the courtroom as a member of the Traveller community." It is like that.

Yesterday in Ballyfermot, two members of the Garda stopped their van and laughed at a man from my community. I saw this with my own two eyes. He was going by Tesco in Ballyfermot. He was carrying a bag. He is an alcoholic. The gardaí just stopped and made it evident that they were laughing at him. It is like that. Travellers need to be protected within society too. That needs to come from the Government down to the resource centre workers and the civil advice workers. Members of our community should be valued because we want to give to society, but it is unfortunate that the view that we are not good enough has been embedded in society. We are not good enough to own land and we are not good enough to do jobs. We want to participate. I just want to say that.

I will pass back over to Professor O'Flaherty. Much of my contribution consisted of comments. For us, as a committee, it is about the little wins and what we can achieve. Now we are doing an interim report. While it is a great committee, sometimes it is a wee bit disheartening because we are wondering what will be implemented and what small changes can we bring to better the lives of members of the Traveller community in this country.

I thank the cut-out for coming in today. I will pass back, if we have time, to the committed members around Traveller equality.

Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

I do not have anything to add at this point, other than to say that my colleagues and I have taken close note of what the Chair said and will pay it proper attention in our drawing up our own statement, which will be issued next week.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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There are six minutes left if any of the members wishes to add anything. I know we were on time, and then I took a load of time. It is only fair that members come back in.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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One of the issues I found very successful was homework clubs whereby Traveller children got assistance with homework because they found that, in their own accommodation, it was not suitable. It was too crowded, too cramped, too noisy. Sometimes the peer pressure mitigated against anybody who wanted to study. That is something as well. I found homework clubs extremely practical, successful and beneficial. We have been trying to push that here. I would be interested in discovering if similar practices exist in other parts of Europe and how successful they are.

I want to come back briefly in the minute I have to the issue of casual racism. I accept what Professor O'Flaherty said about that but I feel that we are missing something here. I am curious as to whether or not there has been any research carried out across the Union. We have got lots of research with respect to the views of the Traveller community on how they feel, but I am not sure whether any research has been carried out among the rest of the population as to why they hold such views about the various communities, in particular Travellers and Roma. I have not seen that anywhere. Has it been done, in Ireland or in Europe, to dig really deeply in there to see where these views are coming from and how they can be addressed? If we come in at it, as Professor O'Flaherty stated, from the point of view of punitive action and accountability, we are coming in after the fact and we are not getting why it is said in the first place. Is this a fear that people have of Traveller families and members of the Traveller community? Why does that exist and how can that be dealt with? I put it to the Professor O'Flaherty that what I am referring to is leading to the prejudice and discrimination. Unless we deal with it at a fundamental grassroots level, we will not succeed.

Professor Michael O'Flaherty:

On the specific issue of strategies in education such as homework clubs, I do not have anything that I could usefully add now.

Around education in general - this is a Europe-wide observation stretching well beyond the EU - I want to say that we still have to take account of the impact of Covid on children and on their education. I have not been researching this specifically in the context of Travellers in Ireland. In the EU setting where I worked previously, however, we saw huge problems with the Roma community in that children were asked to do learning from home in a context where never mind their not having online access, they did not even have electricity. I have to assume that there were aspects of that here in Ireland as well. These children did not disappear. They are still trying to work their way through the school system right now with that added disadvantage.

On the general population, there was limited work done by my former agency, the Fundamental Rights Agency, on attitudes of the general population to minorities, minority issues and minority groups which generated conflicting results. On the one hand, there is an openness towards decency and respecting human rights in our society to a degree that was encouraging but, on the other, when people were asked - not this committee but in the EU setting - if they would be willing to have a Roma neighbour or allow one of their children to marry into the Roma community, the figures were very low indeed. That is the only research around the general population of which I am directly aware. There could be academic material that I have not had access to. What I can tell the Deputy is that the research and sociology repeatedly show that the more people know about another group the less afraid they are of the other group.

On investment in the context of building up awareness, I mentioned education but there is a job of adult education also to be done, of positive messaging in society, that would bring great benefits.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I would make two points. There was research done. It was part of a 30-year study carried out by Fr. Micheál Mac Gréil, who was a sociologist, in three sections. The last book was published in 2011 or 2012. Basically, Fr. Mac Gréil was funded, and he was doing that book, to look at two groups. He did every group in society but he had a chapter on Irish language speakers and on Travellers. What he found out was that top of the social acceptability scale are Irish language speakers. Nobody objects to them living next door. One might say that is self-evident, but it is not so self-evident as it might appear.

If the Irish language had not become an official language of the State and had not been sociologically important to the new State, then Irish language speakers would have been peripheral poor and could have wound up in a very different place. It is very interesting how something done for national and linguistic reasons also had a very positive sociological effect. The most distant group in all the measures Fr. Micheál Mac Gréil researched was found in response to questions on how people would feel about a member of one's family marrying into the Traveller community, living next door to a member of the Traveller community, and so on. Fr. Micheál Mac Gréil covered all those issues. It is in a published work on prejudice and intolerance in Ireland, Pluralism and Diversity in Ireland: Prejudice and Related Issues in Early 21st Century Ireland.It is worth it because it is a very detailed study. He also wrote about the vicious circle of poverty creating conditions to create, in turn, exclusion, things going around in a circle all the time and how to break it. It is replicated in this context.

The other aspect is that there is a Bill moving to Committee Stage soon, I am told. It is a Bill the Cathaoirleach brought through before. She might outline the detail of it because she was involved in promoting it.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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It is the Traveller Culture and History in Education Bill 2018 and it will be on Committee Stage on 20 November. Again, it did not just happen. There is a need to push things through constantly as committee members. To end on this note, we have a Behaviour and Attitudes survey that was done and published in 2018. It is on the general population's attitude towards members of the Traveller community and its findings are extremely worrying in today's society. I will give the last word to Deputy Stanton.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I think we all know what the attitudes are. My question is why they are as they are. This is what we need to look at, rather than the what. We know what the attitudes and issues are, and we know the work done by Fr. Mac Gréil. He has outlined the problems. To drill deeper again, the question is why this is the case. Maybe then we could start to really address the issues and attitudes.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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Yes.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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If I went to the Aborigines in Australia, to the native Americans or to other indigenous communities, I would find many of the same syndromes of exclusion leading to alcohol or other substance abuse and to people despising those communities and so on. One thing was interesting about the work of Fr. Mac Gréil, since he looked at every group in society, including immigrant communities and so on. He had a chapter on Travellers, and the interesting thing was that the Travellers, of all the groups in society, came out at the bottom in terms of acceptability, which is quite a shameful reflection on the Irish people in terms of the fact there is an issue. They have been here always and yet there is this prejudice. It was very interesting.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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I thank Deputy Ó Cuív and all our members. I also thank the commissioner, Mr. O'Flaherty, and his colleagues for being here this morning. Their input into this meeting will help us going forward. I thank him for supporting our work. Is there any other business? No.