Mags Gargan
The Parish Priest for the Travelling community in Dublin has said a recent meeting with Government representatives has given hope of formal State recognition of Traveller ethnicity.
Fr Derek Farrell, PP of the Parish of the Travelling People, attended a Roundtable Meeting on Traveller Ethnicity last week with representatives of Traveller organisations and senior civil servants, which was convened by Minister for State Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and the Traveller & Roma Inclusion Unit of the Department of Justice.
“The meeting felt like an important step forward, both for the State and for the Traveller community. It was not quite that the final step has at last been taken, but that the final step certainly could and should now be taken,” Fr Farrell told The Irish Catholic.
“My experience over nine years so far in the parish, seeing the harrowing effects of prejudice, disadvantage and internalised oppression on so many Travellers, indicates strongly to me how the positive signal of formal State recognition can begin to make a real and tangible difference in addressing such effects, and can help to create a new healing, just and positive dynamic,” he said.
Brigid Quilligan, Director of the Irish Traveller Movement described the meeting as a “hugely important day, full of symbolism, emotion and hope. The inputs were well received and no barriers were identified from statutory agencies on why State recognition of Traveller ethnicity should not happen”.
