Time for Travellers to be recognised as an ethnic minority - Ireland

From the Irish Times

We’re sitting in a country hotel on the way back from a day in Knock. The owner comes over to our group to welcome us, asks how we’re getting on. We’re a group of eight women, mostly Travellers. They’re surprised, pleased: it’s not their usual experience.

One recalls how she couldn’t get a cup of coffee at a Traveller wedding because the hotel had ruled that no hot drinks would be served that day.

Another talks about her experience in her local shop: she walks in, there’s a queue of people waiting to be served, but immediately, a staff member approaches her, says “can I help you?” She knows that this isn’t an expression of concern, but of suspicion.

Small things, you might think, but not for Travellers, whose lives are daily corroded by the contempt so many of their fellow citizens feel for them. Or as Brigid Quilligan, director of the Irish Traveller Movement, told a recent Oireachtas Committee , “. . .we still experience discrimination and prejudice in every area of life on a daily basis. People justify racism by stating we bring it on ourselves. This is what the general Irish population thinks about us and we know this. We feel the hate, as do our children.”

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