Problems for Irish travellers, both at home and abroad

They travel around Europe at the same time every year, mostly in caravans. And almost as traditional as their journey are the reactions they cause wherever they go: prejudice and complaints.The motive for Irish travellers’ trips to Germany, the Netherlands and Bulgaria has been ascribed by local media as everything from seeking out fresh opportunities for crime to religious pilgrimages.The media also inflates just how big their numbers are. According to a spokesman for the Irish Traveller Movement, a national rights group, “some families may travel abroad for work in trades such as laying tarmacadam, but there is no tradition of a generalised exodus in the summer, certainly not from Dublin.”Thefts, noise disturbances, property damage, mountains of trash dumped at illegal campsites – the travellers have been accused of all these things. In Germany, police have already started responding to residents’ complaints in the towns where travellers set up camp.According to the movement, there are an estimated 25,000 travellers in Ireland, making up more than 4,485 traveller families.This tiny minority have traditionally had a nomadic lifestyle, typically working as tinsmiths or blacksmiths and trading in horses and scrap metal.It is estimated that an additional 15,000 travellers live in Britain, with a further 10,000 travellers of Irish descent living in the US.“It may be that Irish travelling families living in Britain are among those that travel to the continent,” says a movement spokesman.“But we don’t have any more knowledge about Irish travellers in Britain than we do about settled people living in Britain, as our remit is to represent travellers in Ireland,” the spokesman said.Part of that remit is tackling the social problems faced by travellers in Ireland every day. Substandard accommodation, high suicide rates, discrimination and poor educational outcomes are among the many challenges facing them.The All Ireland Traveller Health Survey, conducted by University College Dublin in 2010, concluded that the life expectancy for a male traveller was 61.7 years – 15.1 years lower than a man from the general population. Female life expectancy was 70.1, 11.5 years lower than the general population. The suicide rate is also six times higher for travellers than for the general population.Many believe that travellers were dispossessed of their land during the Irish famine of the 1840s. But recent research has found that travellers emerged as a distinct group as far back as 1650.Researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin and the University of Edinburgh found that any genetic disparities between travellers and settled people were due to travellers remaining genetically isolated for several centuries.Irish travellers, who are not related to the Roma people, were recognised as an ethnic minority by the Irish parliament on March 1 this year after a lengthy campaign.“We see this as a stepping stone towards achieving long-term change,” says John O’Sullivan, a member of the community who works with men’s health in the population.“The government has now prepared a New Travel and Roma Inclusion Plan in consultation with travellers,” he adds.Government policy had been to treat travellers as a “broken settled people who needed to be reformed,” says O’Sullivan.“This forced assimilation had a huge impact on travellers, who had to deny who they were,” he says.O’Sullivan sees education and employment as key to the future of the travelling community.“There is a need for more jobs. We need innovative job creation initiatives. The skills on the ground could be used to create more work, and this could be tied in to the education system. Travellers need to put more value on education.”Men are traditionally the breadwinners in traveller families, and with the disappearance of traditional trades, unemployment is as high as 84 per cent within the group.“I am very hopeful that this new ethnicity status will put more pressure on the state agencies to help create better outcomes for travellers,” says O’Sullivan. - DPA