The first item on the agenda is the election of the Cathaoirleach of the committee. I now invite nominations for the position of Cathaoirleach.
Election of Cathaoirleach
Clerk to the Committee
I nominate Seanadóir Flynn.
I second the nomination.
Clerk to the Committee
As there are no other nominations, I must now put the question: "That Senator Flynn be elected Cathaoirleach of the joint committee." Is that agreed? Agreed.
I declare Senator Flynn elected as Cathaoirleach.
Senator Eileen Flynn took the Chair.
I thank members so much for nominating me as Cathaoirleach. It is a privilege to be the Cathaoirleach of the Joint Committee on Key Issues Affecting the Traveller Community (2023). I note to the many members who are around the table today that this will be a longstanding committee. It is quite an achievement. Even if we were never to get back in as part of the Irish Parliament again, it is quite a legacy to leave behind. I am absolutely delighted with that. I am coming back in now as Cathaoirleach and I know what I am doing, but the first time around I was learning and getting the opportunity to learn how it works. As I said, I am honoured to be Cathaoirleach of the Traveller committee. As a member of the Traveller community, we always say that Travellers should be leading Travellers, and there should be nothing about Travellers without Travellers. It is therefore a good example to have a member of the community as a Cathaoirleach.
I declare that I will be faithful in my duty and I will make no judgment against, or show favouritism to, anybody who comes before the committee. I will be true to the role. I will apply the rules that are laid down by Leinster House and I will implement those rules in a fair and respectful manner. I look forward to working with everybody and the committee members.
Most importantly, I look forward to doing the work with the Traveller community. I will look for the implementation of the work of the previous committee. That is what this committee is here to do; to implement actions for our community to bring about a better quality of life and opportunities for the Traveller community. I now invite members to speak.
I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on her appointment. It is well deserved. The last time it had been a baptism of fire, because the Senator was new to the House. I know that when a new Member comes in it can be a very strange place to be, but the Senator did a fantastic job as Cathaoirleach of the committee. Good progress was made. We have the report. There was a key line in that report that said there are plenty of reports, but action on the ground is now needed to make a material difference to the lives of Travellers and to make sure they get fair treatment right across the board in Irish society. We have a huge challenge ahead of us to now focus on the delivery of change. We have enough paper now; action is what is needed. Comhghairdeas, a Chathaoirligh, agus go n-éirí leat. I look forward to this committee being part of that effecting of change.
I want to congratulate the Cathaoirleach. I was privileged to sit on the last committee with her, as well as a number of the Deputies present. We produced a very good report. The challenge for us now, as Deputy Ó Cuív has said, is to implement it.
The first thing we should do, and we can discuss it here, is to revisit all those halting sites we visited last time to see if there has been any difference on the ground in those communities. We should follow up on that with the councils involved.
This should be one the first things we do, and we should follow on from there.
I would also like to convey congratulations to the Cathaoirleach and state, especially on behalf of the Green Party grouping, how pleased we are to see her accede and to have her elevated to this role today.
I was privileged to have as a lecturer in third level education the late Reverend Micheál Mac Gréil, a famous campaigning sociologist. He said on record many times that the policy of mere assimilation would not work. That policy involves insisting that someone must be like many other people. Dr. Mac Gréil's book, Pluralism & Diversity in Ireland, is about 21st-century Ireland. Chapter 13 is entitled "The Travelling People – Ireland's Apartheid". Dr. Mac Gréil passed away recently. I spoke to him on many occasions and had the privilege of meeting him shortly before he passed away. He spoke very highly of Deputy Ó Cuív, who is here today. Dr. Mac Gréil said we have failed with the policy of assimilation and need integrated pluralism. He said we need integration to have equality of opportunity, equal rights, equal treatment and pluralism. He believed we need to celebrate and embrace people's differences for those who want to stay different. They enrich our community. It is almost ecumenical that if a certain group wants to have the Sabbath on a Thursday or Friday, not a Sunday, one should not stand in its way. In 1983, Dr. Mac Gréil was a witness in Senator Norris's constitutional case against the criminalisation of homosexuality. He denounced homophobia as one of the most invidious prejudices and believed the Catholic Church should review its past relationship with gay people. He was a passionate supporter of minorities and would be very pleased with what has happened today. He paid particular attention to the treatment of Travellers in Ireland and published The Emancipation of the Travelling People in 2010. In the book, he said Ireland's treatment of the Travellers must rank as one of the most serious social embarrassments in the then 86-year history of our independence.
The Chair brings her listening skills to her new role. I can vouch at first hand that she has lit up Seanad Éireann since she became a Member. The good thing about the Chair, despite her first-hand experience, is not that she is exclusively and solely about one minority that is under attack or being undermined; she will prove to be a fair and brilliant advocate for the many other minorities that Dr. Mac Gréil and others spoke about. She is a breath of fresh air. Without putting too much weight on her shoulders, I believe she is the future Mac Gréil, the successor to such advocates on the front line. Today is an important step. Indeed, it is a small piece of history, but it is for naught unless we take the next steps. These will be ably led by Senator Flynn, but she will not be able to do it on her own; we will all have to dig deeper to find a better way forward for a new, more inclusive Ireland. Today is a red-letter occasion and I am delighted to see Senator Flynn in the Chair.
I thank the Senator.
Along with the previous speakers, I congratulate the Senator on her re-elevation to the Chair. I also congratulate her on succeeding in having this committee established on a proper and continuous footing. I am certain she will do a very good job. She did a very good job the last time. Better she is getting.
The best experiences I had as a member of the previous committee were on the days we went out of here. I remember, in particular, the visit to Labre Park in Finglas. At home, I mingle with members of the Traveller community a lot. I can understand them and they can understand me, and we get the feel of each other. We, as a committee, need to do a lot more interfacing, not necessarily all in Dublin. I hope that can be put on the schedule. Again, comhghairdeas, a Chathaoirligh.
I congratulate the Cathaoirleach again. I had the honour of being on the previous committee. It is great to see it back. I agree with the previous speakers that a great body of work was done by the previous committee. A fantastic report was produced, but, as others have said, there is no point in it lying on a shelf; we need to see its recommendations implemented.
I echo what Deputy Joan Collins has said. We visited four sites, in Galway, Ballyfermot, Finglas and Spring Lane. The first job of this committee is to revisit them. Deputy Joan Collins, Deputy Ó Cuív and I have received correspondence from residents in Spring Lane. The matter was raised on the floor of the Dáil by way of a Topical Issue. We owe it to the people to whom we made a commitment to go back and see them. We need to do that as a matter of urgency as part of our work.
I thank the Deputy.
I, too, congratulate the Cathaoirleach. I got to know her in the past few years. I can tell that she will make a great Chair. What is happening today has to be an honour for her and her family. People talk about making history and setting down markers. The Senator has now made history and is now living history.
When I was a member of Cork County Council, I was a member of the Traveller consultative committee and worked on various incidents and situations. I hope that, as with previous committees of which I was a member, such as those dealing with Sláintecare, the future of mental health care, and autism, politics will be left aside and we will work collectively. It is about achieving things and doing the right things. If we can all pull together as a team on this, I cannot see why this committee cannot be as successful as people want it to be. I am sure that, with the leadership of the Cathaoirleach, there will be no problem driving things forward. I am just looking forward to helping and working with everybody else. As I said, we are all proud even to be members of this committee but we want to get our legs running straight away. Some of the members have said that, on the basis of promises made to others, we should make visits to check the progress and then come back here. At least we would then be starting on the right foot. I wish the Cathaoirleach the very best of luck and look forward to working with everybody.
I thank the Deputy.
I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on her appointment. It has been said that she is like a breath of fresh air. She is. Well done to her. May she keep it up.
There is a huge amount of work to be done. I chaired for four years the justice committee which dealt with the national Traveller and Roma inclusion strategy. It was very difficult and challenging. We did the ethnicity bit way back, because that is what the Traveller community asked for early on. The night in the Dáil was a big occasion because it nulled the 1963 commission report, which looked upon Travellers as a problem to be solved. Getting rid of that put things on a new footing, but that is all it did. It was very important but now we have got to move on from there.
An area I am still concerned about relates to education and exclusion from education. The Department of Education set up four pilot projects under the national Traveller and Roma inclusion strategy. It would be interesting to see where they are at, but we should now have gone beyond pilots and the resources should be national. Every young child from the Traveller community should have an opportunity to receive an education. If that does not happen, employment is impossible later. The exclusion of Travellers was really insidious. They went to school at 9 o'clock in the morning and were out on the streets at 10 o'clock. I met mothers, in particular, who were very concerned that youths of 11, 12 and 13, and quite often young children, were on the streets. They are very vulnerable at that age to others influencing them in a very negative way. It was said that the children should not be on the streets but in school receiving an education and training, and skills they could use. This is an area we should focus on quite clinically.
I am concerned about the committee getting spread out into everything. There is a huge number of areas between employment, education, housing, health and mental health, and all of those areas are very important. If we are not careful, there is a risk of it being spread too thinly and the committee spending a small amount of time on each one and not getting anywhere. If we focus intensely on one area for a period and, as colleagues such as Deputy Joan Collins rightly said, show results at the end of it, that might be the way to go.
We need to get the facts, figures and statistics from the ground, see how many young Traveller children are in the education system and see where they are at. We need to find out, anecdotally or otherwise, if school exclusion is still a thing, and how many young Traveller children get through the system and succeed in reaching leaving certificate or third level, as the Chair and others have done. Maybe we should start with that, focus clinically and strongly on it and then move on to another area and spend a block of time at that, and let people know we are not going away until we see progress. If we jump from one thing to the next, we will not get anything done. That is my experience.
When I was in the Department, I visited many sites around the country and what I saw was shocking. The Ministers with responsibility for housing and the local authorities have a huge amount of work to do but so has the wider community. Quite often, what happens is that the wider community is not supportive of what people try to do and we get all kinds of resistance. We might have to look into that as well.
I wish the committee every success with this. I take it that this is the weekly time slot for the committee meeting. Is it fixed for Wednesdays at 2.30 p.m.?
I would just make the point that Mr. Leo Bollins is the clerk to the committee. He was the clerk to the committee the last time and I also had the privilege of working with him on the Joint Committee on Autism, so is great to have him on board.
I second that 100%. It is brilliant to have the clerk who was here before so we know what we are doing and we are not all starting from scratch.
There are 84 recommendations from the last Traveller committee and they come under headings on education, health, including mental health, accommodation and employment. Not nearly enough of the recommendations were implemented but let us keep positive for the day that is in it. I note that some of the recommendations on employment and apprenticeships have been implemented on the ground.
We have our work cut out for us as a committee because we are held accountable by members of the Traveller community, rightly so. This committee gives us the opportunity to make sure there is implementation. I thank the previous committee members from the bottom of my heart for all of their work, including getting this committee up and running as a standing committee. As I said, it is very important that, when we are not here, the work continues and that needs to be the case for the Traveller community.
I propose that we go into private session for further discussion on the date of the next public meeting and so on.
Are we going to vote on a Vice Chair?
Not today. We will just put it out there today and if members want to nominate themselves for the next meeting, they can do so. Thank you. Is it agreed that we go into private session? Agreed.
The joint committee went into private session at 2.54 p.m. and adjourned at 3.09 p.m. until 10 a.m. on Thursday, 13 July 2023.