Bríd Smith Urges Investigation into State Treatment of Travellers

For Margaret, and like others, I really do want to compliment Colette Kellagher, former Senator, or her colleague, Oond of Radoom, and Senator Eileen Flynn, and really to compliment Deputy Tommy Pringle for bringing this bill, and as has been said, it is a short bill to promote and acknowledge an understanding of culture and history of the travelling community, but I just want to spend a minute thinking about that, why do we have to do that, why do we have to bill, pass legislation to do that, and I want to really look at where that comes from. If we are to realistically address the issue of travellers and the discrimination they face on a daily basis, we have to acknowledge the state's role in the policy that got us here. We know that their history and their impact and their role in the war of independence, the role that our clans play throughout our history, their music, their culture is hidden from us, it is hidden from traveller children, but it is also crucially, the wealth of that and the richness of that is hidden from non-traveller children, and that creates a reliance on negative stereotypes, a sort of reliance on a cycle of racism and discrimination. The state as a whole from its foundation made a decision that travellers were of no real value and set in process a motion of assimilating and absorbing travellers. This was backed up by legislation in 1925, three years remember after the state was founded, and continued right up until 2002 with the introduction of the trespass legislation. I see the history of this state has been a process of legislative cleansing of the travelling community. The Local Authority Act of 1925 had a clear intent to remove travellers from the physical environment. They did not state it quite so, but when the act was reviewed in 1947, the then minister stated it and he said it was specifically targeted at those living at the side of the road. This state initiated an attack on a people's identity and the erosion of that identity and culture. It meant that they were seen as not entitled to the same recognition, the same investment, the same resources, the same rights, a huge demarcation between them and us. And the biggest insult of all was in the last 10 years, the recent austerity that was imposed on the people of this country saw 85.5% of a cut to traveller education. Absolutely shocking statistic. The Irish Free State's idea of what it decided was to be true Irish or valued Irish was to create a monocultural identity. They did this in partnership with the Catholic Church and we saw that through the pages of history that we are now made more aware of what happened to women. There were backlash and counter-revolution against women through the Magdalene Laundries, the mother and baby homes, etc. We are more aware of that. We are more aware of the incarceration of the poor in industrial schools and that did not exclude children and poor from the travelling community. But the same level of investigation into the history of the treatment of the traveller community by this State has not been had and it needs to be had. In other words, Minister, we need to fess up to what is deeply inherent in the Irish State in a legislative process, in a process of all of its arms, whether it is medicine, whether it is courts, whether it is Gardaí, whether it is local authorities. There is a deeply embedded bias against travellers and it is in the Department of Education as well. That early intent of the Irish Free State to remove travellers from the physical environment has been repeated and repeated. None more so illustrated than the 1960s and the Commission of Itinerancy that was referred to earlier on, headed up by Charles J. Hawhey, then Minister for Justice, who stated at the time that there could be no final solution until itinerant families were absorbed into the general community. That is what has been happening and was stated by Deputy Connolly that there were no representatives on that commission of the traveller community or organisations that cared about them. So I think we should have a look back at the history of this State and how it is set out to hide the travelling community, to impoverish them, to embed racism into every system. I think there are many deputies in this House who would have had that experience, particularly at local authority level, when you sit on local traveller accommodation committees, which have been an absolute farce because traveller accommodation and indeed traveller education has only worsened since. I really do recommend the bill, but at the same time I think ultimately this will not be truly dealt with until we fess up and have a full investigation into how the Irish Free State, and since we are going to be commemorating its 100 years shortly, this is the time that we actually look back in history and see how the legislative cleansing of the travelling community was repeated and repeated throughout the decades of the history of this country. Let us begin by passing this legislation post-haste and then that sort of legislative cleansing. The deputy... ... ... ...