Event report

The Minister of State for European Affairs, Thomas Byrne T.D. met virtually with 4 Travellers Organisations – Pavee Point, The Irish Travellers Movement, National Traveller Women’s Forum and Minceirs Whiden on 29 September 2021 to discuss a number of Conference topics Suggestions and proposals raised under each topic are as follows: Health - More supports for Travellers need to be made available in the area of health. Life expectancy at present is lower than the average life expectancy and rates of infant mortality, asthma and diabetes are all higher in the traveller communities. - The EU should ensure medicines/medical information is easy to read and understand. A number of travellers and other minority groups have a lower standard of literacy especially when it comes to reading medication. - Any health recovery package post-COVID should look at high risk groups in societies - More supports/resources for Travellers in the COVID vaccination programme – a lot of fear in the travelling community concerning the COVID vaccination Values and Rights, Rule of Law & Society - The Rule of Law as a core value of the European Union from which to guarantee fundamental rights gives a layer of protection for Travellers including monitoring and scrutiny on matters which directly impact on our equality. - More robust mechanisms for persuasion would be reviewed to ensure obligations are met by Member states - EU needs to do more to protect social and cultural rights of minorities - Rule of Law should also extend to travellers and other ethnic minorities - EU should ensure that there are enhanced safeguards in place where minorities are still facing challenges and where Member States have not acted on recommendations made by the Commission. - The creation of a central oversight body/independent body to investigate cases of Member States not following recommendations - Random Sampling, EU Surveys etc. should include minorities in their samples- otherwise results can be skewed – example given was how many minorities are included in the EU wide Citizens’ panels for the Conference on the Future of Europe. - Centralised funding needs to be made available from the EU to help tackle hate motivated crimes. - The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities is a good model that could be copied in other areas. - More interaction is needed between MEPs and Commissioners with regards to travellers and traveller issues. - More work is needed to encourage travellers to become involved in politics and more minority representation amongst the staff in the EU institutions and agencies. - The EU Race Directive should include Law Enforcement Agencies. A Stronger Economy, Jobs and Social Justice - Sufficient resources are needed to allow travellers have opportunities in employment and education - Travellers need to mentioned in mainstream policies and initiatives - EU should do more to work with employers to open doors for travellers Education Culture Youth and Sport - As well as gender quotas, there should also be ethnic quotas for certain jobs - A number of young travellers have negative experiences of the education system including bullying, harassment, and lack of traveller culture on the curricula. - More could be done to include travellers and other minorities in the education system - EU has an important role in highlighting failures by Member States and “embarrassing” them into taking action. - For travellers, the EU is largely irrelevant. More could be done to make the EU more relevant to travellers. - Candidate Countries have large minorities of travellers and Roma, more will need to be done to welcome them into the EU when these countries join.