Joint Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community (2023) debate -
Thursday, 3 Oct 2024

I welcome everyone to the twenty-eighth meeting of the Joint Committee on Key Issues Affecting the Traveller Community. We have apologies from the Cathaoirleach, Senator Eileen Flynn - it is for that reason that I am chairing the meeting - and Senator Joe O'Reilly.

I would like to remind members that they must be physically present within Leinster House to take part in the public meetings of committees. I will not allow a member to take part in this meeting if they are not in Leinster House. The witnesses have probably been through this rigmarole a few times, but I have to read out a note regarding the evidence given and privilege. The evidence of witnesses physically present in Leinster House today is protected by absolute privilege, but you should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. You should not engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity.

I propose that we publish the opening statements and submissions from our witnesses on our website. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I suggest that we invite our witnesses to speak for between five and ten minutes. We will then open the floor for questions. Each member will have five minutes, and we can then go again as long as members have questions. Rather than have members waiting a long time, I ask them to keep the questions reasonably tight in the first round and we can then have a second.

The committee is continuing its examination of the Traveller experience of the justice system. We have examined the prison system. The committee is aware that Travellers represent less than 1% of the population, but make up a much greater percentage of the prison population. Today, we are focusing on Travellers as victims of crime, the pipeline to prison, including, for example, racial profiling and bail conditions, the search of Traveller homes and Travellers' trust in the criminal justice system generally.

There are many parts to the justice system, including the Garda, prosecutors, courts, Prison Service and Probation Service. The committee is interested in hearing about the experience of Travellers dealing with all aspects of the justice system. The committee looks forward to hearing about the research carried out by the Irish Travellers' Access to Justice Research team in the University of Limerick, UL. We are grateful to the witnesses for coming here today. From the Irish Travellers' Access to Justice Research team, we have Dr. Sindy Joyce, from the department of sociology; Mr. David Joyce, a peer researcher; Professor Amanda Haynes, from the department of sociology; and Professor Jennifer Schweppe, from the department of law. I call on Dr. Joyce to make her opening statement.

I thank the committee for inviting us here today to discuss the finding of the Irish Travellers' Access to Justice Research study. It was funded by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, and the Irish Research Council and was conducted through research from the European Centre for the Study of Hate at the University of Limerick. The research team was majority Traveller and four of the six-person team are present today; Margaret O'Brien and Olive O'Reilly are the two team members who are not present. The research team was advised by a committee that was also majority Traveller and included representatives of Pavee Point, the Irish Traveller Movement, the National Traveller Women’s Forum, the Traveller Mediation Service, Minceirs Whiden, the Department of Justice and An Garda Síochána. The research team's findings are ground-breaking in providing for the first time a comprehensive, human rights informed portrait of Travellers' perceptions and experiences of the criminal justice system.

The team conducted lengthy survey interviews with one in every 60 adult Travellers in Ireland and conducted 29 interviews with people working with Traveller organisations nationally and regionally. We found that Travellers see themselves as suspect in the eyes of the police and the courts, simply because of their ethnicity. They experience over-policing as a community and under-policing as victims of crime. We provide robust evidence of a pipeline to prison, fuelled by racial profiling, a disproportionate use of stop and search powers, including shockingly common searches of Traveller homes, and concomitantly high rates of arrest. Some Travellers described police provocation, in particular of young men. In court, Travellers report indifference to the barriers the community encounters around accessing justice.

They perceive that Travellers are guilty until proven innocent. There is a disproportionately high number of Travellers in prison for minor offending. In recounting their most negative experience with judges in the past five years, a key theme which arose in our research was the belief that Travellers receive disproportionately high sentences compared to their settled counterparts. It is important to say that we found evidence of good practices also among members of the police and the Judiciary but these were the exception rather than the rule and dependent on committed individuals, not on institutionally embedded practice.

We welcome this opportunity to discuss both the findings of the report and the State’s responses to those findings in the two and a half years since its publication. In recruiting participants to the research, we made a commitment that this research would not sit on the shelf, but that we would advocate for action on the findings and recommendations. Since the launch of the report, we have presented to two United Nations committees, the Council of Europe, the Policing Authority and Garda Ombudsman, representatives of An Garda Síochána, the EU Subgroup on Equality Data, the District Court judges conference, the steering committee of NTRIS and the Department of Justice. It is disappointing, therefore, that the State has yet to adopt or act on the recommendations of the report in any meaningful way. The report offers a comprehensive range of recommendations. Today, we would like to highlight three recommendations of the research.

The first recommendation is to introduce an ethnic identifier throughout the criminal process. Equality data is essential to tracking disparities in how groups are treated in the criminal justice system, promoting fair treatment through accountability and developing remedial policy and procedures. In the absence of official equality data, both the Garda Commissioner and representatives of the State have denied findings of both ITAJ and EU Fundamental Rights Agency, EUFRA, research that speak to the existence of racial discrimination against Travellers in the criminal justice system.

At a meeting of the Policing Authority on 30 June 2022, the Garda Commissioner responded to questions about the racial profiling of Travellers prompted by the ITAJ research by stating:

I don’t believe we do undertake racial profiling ... Racial profiling is a very serious allegation to level against An Garda Síochána and before I would accept that I would want to be certain on the reasons why I was accepting that allegation.

A month later, at the 92nd session of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, a representative of the State responded to a similar question by stating:

There have been questions of racial profiling. Racial profiling is not a feature of policing in Ireland. It's not compatible with the human rights obligations of An Garda Síochána, but there have been tensions between particular communities and the guards.

The second recommendation is for the development of a criminal justice strategy for the Traveller community. The Department of Justice Statement of Strategy 2024-2026, published this year, omits any reference to Travellers, Traveller ethnicity, ethnicity, racial profiling or racism and sees access to justice being operationalised through a “faster, more effective justice system”. In her foreword, the Minister states, “we will uphold the fundamental right to fair and equal access for all”, but there are no objectives or outcomes linked to this other than a reference to improving access to “vulnerable users”.

The National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy II 2024-2028, in contrast, summarises findings of the Irish Travellers Access to Justice Research and of the 2019 EUFRA Traveller and Roma Survey with respect to ethnic profiling and acknowledges the need to address the over-representation of Travellers in prison and low levels of trust in An Garda Síochána. The associated actions include many important recommendations, including with respect to diversion and alternatives to prison. They do not, however, address themselves to policing practice or to the courts. We assert that actions to achieve equal treatment by criminal justice agencies must include interventions addressed to the operation of criminal justice agencies.

The third key recommendation was to develop a robust and independent complaints mechanism operating across the criminal justice system. There have been significant changes to complaints mechanisms with respect to both police and courts since the publication of the ITAJ recommendations. The impending launch of Fiosrú, the new GSOC, is very welcome. The Garda Ombudsman’s office has already evidenced a commitment to engaging with the Traveller community and requested a presentation to its caseworkers on the ITAJ research. The particularly low levels of trust, literacy and digital literacy, as well as particular experiences of racial profiling and exceptionally high rates of searches of the home, necessitate a bespoke approach to the needs of this community. We hope Fiosrú will consider these matters in developing its public awareness functions and in developing the accessibility of its complaints mechanisms. Since the publication of the ITAJ research, a mechanism has been established by which a complaint can be made regarding judicial misconduct. This is also a very welcome development. As in the case of Fiosrú, it is important that the complaints mechanism is publicised and functionally accessible to the Traveller community.

With respect to accountability and transparency, we are concerned that neither the police nor the judicial complaints mechanisms produce any equality data with respect to the identity of complainants or the treatment or outcome of their complaints. Equally, we are concerned that neither process meets human rights standards of being independent institutionally, hierarchically and in practice. A key reason Travellers do not complain is the fear of retaliation from those who are the subject of the complaint. We suggest that processes be urgently put in place to address this issue.

We ask the committee to, first, reject the normalising of Travellers’ over-representation in the prison system and to understand it, not as an inevitability, but as an outcome of systemic racism including in the criminal process; second, acknowledge the need for equality data to address disparities in treatment and to build trust in the criminal justice system; third, advocate for fully independent complaints mechanisms that are functionally and universally accessible, as well as trustworthy to users; and, finally, recognise the urgency of State action to disrupt the pipeline to prison. We thank the committee.

I will make a couple of comments. I thank the witnesses very much for the presentation. I have just come from a meeting of the Joint Committee on Drugs Use. I have a bad clash of meetings on Thursday mornings. Last week, I attended meetings of this committee and the committee on drugs use and heard about addiction, poverty, housing, inequality, systemic racism and discrimination and how those issues negatively impact some people and lead to worse outcomes.

There is an opportunity here. We have an election coming and we would like to see clear manifesto requests. Here is an opportunity, and I am hearing a clarion call in this regard. In the report, ITAJ referred to some elements of good practice but that they are not systemically embedded. Could we get a flavour of some of those? What mechanism could be employed to embed those elements into systemic practice across the Judiciary?

The good practices we identify are those that should be universally established in any judicial system or policing practice. They particularly relate to procedures which involve giving voice to people, allowing them to speak, listening to them and treating them fairly and with respect and dignity. I remember one of the most striking quotes from our Traveller interviewees.

The interviewee said they were spoken to "like a human being", not like a Traveller. The experience stood out in the person's memory because it was not the common experience. The common experience is to be treated as "less than" or the "lowest of the lowest". These are both direct quotations from interviewees. The difficulty concerns the extent of the required practices, which should be embedded in any judicial system and in policing and which are probably experienced by many members of the Irish population. The statistics show that, in general, our population has quite a good relationship with the police and, to a slightly lesser extent, the courts. There are quite high levels of trust in both, but that is not translating through in the treatment of the Traveller community. This means we need equality data. If policies are not being implemented coherently and consistently in practice, we have to be able to track it, identify it and deal with it. That means equality data must also relate to complaints. Complaints about mistreatment and poor treatment will also be important in pulling the system back into line and making it accountable to those not receiving the same service and access to justice as everybody else.

I have another question. My accent is obviously northern. For 26 years since the making of the Good Friday Agreement, we have had a section 75 duty in the North. There are two elements, the first being about promoting good relations among specific groups and the second being about equality of opportunity. To achieve these aims, we need data. We have the aims embedded in our international peace agreement, yet we are not very good at producing data. The challenge, therefore, is identifying an international example of good practice in the systemic embedding of data collection and analysis across services. I am thinking of other parts of Europe, maybe those with Roma or other traveller populations.

Interestingly, there are really good examples of the collection of equality data in a region that is no longer part of the EU – in England and Wales. This was driven by the likes of the Lammy report, which used once-off, in-depth research, like the kind we have done through the Irish Travellers’ Access to Justice project, to identify that there was a significant problem that needed to be monitored. That report was followed up with a review. It is a matter of consistently collecting data. The one area where England and Wales fall down regarding their equality data concerns Travellers and Roma; however, there is a model for how this data can be collected, processed and published, and for how the trends and patterns it refers to can be attended to, highlighted by and addressed by the state through successive monitoring reports over time.

For me, one of the standout moments concerning access to justice for people impacted by racialisation and bias within the criminal justice system recently has been the statement by the commissioner of the Police Service of Scotland that institutional racism is a feature of that service. That is the starting point. We cannot start to address a problem while we deny it exists. We have to start by acknowledging that racism, specifically anti-Traveller racism, is endemic and embedded in Irish society. We know this from repeated public attitude surveys and surveys of employers. Fifty-seven percent of employers would not employ a Traveller full stop, just because the candidate is a Traveller. We know this from the education system. We know the problem is embedded in all institutions of our society. Why would the criminal justice system be exceptional? If we do not start from the point of recognition and acknowledgement, we cannot move forward.

I am thinking about UK examples such as those in the Stephen Lawrence report, and also about institutional sexism within the Metropolitan Police and such challenges. I take the point on recognition.

I pay tribute to the witnesses. Having engaged with one in 60 Traveller adults in the State adds to the authenticity and voice of the report. The findings really reflect community experience. It is up to us policymakers and people with access to the levers of power to read the report and ensure it is implemented. I thank Professor Haynes.

Apologies for being late. There is a committee on drugs meeting in another room and two of us are members of it. Bilocation is proving difficult. However, I have read the material presented to us. I thank the delegates for the work they are doing and for what they have produced. I have just a few questions.

The last statement that Professor Haynes made was that anti-Traveller racism is embedded in Irish society. Why?

From the very foundation of the State, there has been a divide in Irish society between the Traveller community and the settled community. I am not here today to give a history lesson but will just state the divide comes from the policies and process of colonisation, but also the anti-nomadic policies and laws introduced by the British and implemented by the Irish.

Could I stop Dr. Joyce there? When I was a garsún, which was a few years ago, Traveller people moved around. They called to farms – I was on a small farm – and they did seasonal labour. They were welcome, in the main, but that seems to have changed in more recent times. The racism Professor Haynes spoke about seems to have got worse in recent times. In the past, Travellers were part of society and had a niche, like those in other areas, and they worked in various areas. However, much of the economy they were involved in changed with the advent of plastics and mechanisation, including farm mechanisation. Am I right that the racism of more recent times, which Professor Haynes spoke about so strongly, seems to be getting worse? Why is that?

I can answer that. The Deputy hit the nail on the head in that the economy of the community has been obliterated by the approach of modernity, including through the mechanisation of farming and the use of plastics in modern society. As tinsmiths and weavers, Travellers played a huge role in rural society, travelling from fair to fair to provide a service that was quite important to the local economy. Travellers were among the first recyclers in this country and were heavily involved in scrap collecting and the recycling of copper, tin and aluminium.

One thing that people miss about Travellers is that they were seasonal farm workers. They were often a very welcome sight on farms because they provided cheap and accessible labour for many farmers when harvesting and planting. They usually helped with tillage farming but also with livestock, although very rarely. The onslaught of modernity and the mechanisation of farming from the 1970s onwards turned us from pretty much rural people into urban people. With that, we started moving into urban centres. We were of an oral tradition rather than a literary one, so we lacked the skills that many in the settled community had, meaning reliance initially on social protection. With regard to falling into poverty, the circumstances have kind of been recreated, with economic marginalisation. There was a difference in understanding between the settled community and the Traveller community in that respect. The Deputy really hit the nail on the head in that not being useful economically has led us to being left behind in many ways.

I will get back to the justice side of it because I have some questions on that as well, but I am looking at the overall societal and sociological situation. Has any research been done in the general population as to why people have such a racist view of Travellers, including in the Garda Síochána? Why are the views of the Garda Síochána and the general population as the witnesses describe?

I agree with Mr. Joyce. There has been a shift in the living circumstances of Irish Travellers, particularly from the 1960s onwards, and in the relationship between the settled community and the Traveller community. However, even at that there was still a deep embedded divide within society at that time. We can look at the Dáil debates, for example. Under the Local Government Act 1925, power was given to local authorities to remove "tinkers" from the local area because of the health and other nuisances that tinkers were causing to the local community. It was not in the 1960s that this attitude towards our community began. It was there already, embedded into society from the anti-nomadic perception the settled community had. You can also look at that process from the foundation of the State of moving away from the general identity that Irish people were stereotyped with globally. We can look at the words used for Irish people in general - the drunken Irish, the fighting Irish, the backwards, uneducated and dirty Irish. All of these terms that were placed upon Irish people in general, immediately after the foundation of the State, were put onto us as a community. The sense was that, when Ireland was looking at nation building and creating a national identity to be respected, a scapegoat was needed in society so we could say, "We are not them, this is the uneducated, backwards and drunken Irish, not us." The divide begins there.

It is important for us not to focus on saying that things were good, and then looking at why things changed, or why we have this attitude from An Garda Síochána and why the racist perceptions of the settled community or An Garda Síochána are so high. Research has been done and surveys have been taken on public attitudes and from An Garda Síochána. In each survey it is the stereotypes that keep coming back over and over. That keeps us in this vicious cycle.

In more recent times, anti-Traveller racism has become the last widely acceptable form of racism in Irish society. People use anti-Traveller language as normalised racist language. When politicians, gardaí, the media or any public representative uses anti-Traveller rhetoric it is not challenged. It is often not challenged by other politicians because it is impolitic to do so due to the high levels of discomfort that Irish people have with Travellers.

I move to the second part of the Deputy's question where he asked about research that has been done within An Garda Síochána. Dave McInerney, the former head of the Garda racial, intercultural and diversity office, GRIDO, conducted that research a couple of years ago. I think it was published in 2020. He found that gardaí who had contact with members of the community had a much more favourable view of Travellers than those who had no contact. Where we see a community as distant and different from us, we think of them as different. We have completed a public attitudes survey in the European Centre for the Study of Hate, which measures social distance across a range of community groups. It will come as no surprise to the Deputy that the levels of absolute discomfort with Travellers from the general population are relatively high compared with other community groups. We do not have time to go into the details, but we would be happy to provide that data.

That particular piece of work is important. A lot of the reaction of politicians comes from the people. I know we also have a duty to lead, but it also comes from below. If there is a rumour, for instance, that a Traveller family is going to be housed in a certain place, we will get a lot of telephone calls. If what Professor Schweppe just said could be focused on and dealt with, that would help a lot. A lot of people do not realise or do not understand.

This is pertinent to both the Deputy's and Professor Schweppe's questions and even that of Senator O'Hara. What came through in that report was the positive interactions with gardaí in the sense of community policing with community gardaí and building positive relationships. If that could be embedded in any way on a national scale, it would show that building trust with a community and finding common humanity were helping to break down barriers and those negative preconceptions people have of each other. That comes through all the way through the report.

It has to happen outside of the context of those everyday encounters. One police officer said to us that they meet people in the worst moments of their lives. The possibility of having community police who engage with people as citizens and not as suspects is particularly important in breaking down barriers between communities that are segregated from one another, sometimes structurally but also because of prejudice. We need leadership to break down that prejudice.

With respect to the Judiciary, we have done some work with the Honourable Ms Justice Mary Rose Gearty who is responsible for judicial education. It was a real honour for us to be told that a copy of the report is given to every judge on their appointment. It seems that there is a movement within the Judiciary towards at least acknowledging institutional racism. From a human rights perspective and the Council of Europe, the first step is acknowledgement. As Professor Haynes said in her opening statement, the Garda and the Department of Justice continue to deny the existence of racial profiling. If racial profiling does not happen in this State, we would be unique internationally. Our police service would be unique internationally if we did not engage in racial profiling. Not only that, the Garda Commissioner used language in the Policing Authority that he did not believe racial profiling was a feature of An Garda Síochána. I do not know about others, but I heard that as the Garda saying it did not believe Travellers. The data is there. We spoke to one in 60 Travellers. Of those we spoke to who were stopped, 58% said they believed the reason they were stopped was because they were a Traveller. This data is almost precisely replicated by the previous study by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in its study on Roma and Travellers in Europe. It found that 59% of Travellers who were stopped believed that they were racially profiled. The difference is 1%. I am not a social scientist but even I know that data is robust. We must accept that as statistically significant.

It is also important to say that these beliefs are not based upon some form of abstract notion. When asked, people had very definite, concrete reasons as to why they believed that was the case. Examples included gardaí saying something about Travellers or something specific about someone as a Traveller, that a particular garda was known in the community for stopping Travellers or the location of where an incident happened, for example, a halting site or a particular location where someone would be stopped coming in and out. This is not a belief without foundation.

In Canada, there are some examples of good practice. It is not perfect because to some extent, this is an issue that has only more recently been accepted as being problematic. Other countries are ahead of us in terms of going through the process of seeing and acknowledging it, acknowledging that it is not an inevitability and accepting that it is not because a community lives up to a stereotype of being criminogenic but because there is a pipeline to prison. It is also a case of accepting that we have a responsibility, as a society and State, to disrupt that pipeline. They are a bit ahead of us in that regard but not by much.

Canada and New Zealand are far ahead of us in terms of collecting equality data for their indigenous communities. This is not just their representation in prison but the pipeline that brings people to prison. The kind of measures that have been brought in are different depending on the country you are talking about. In New Zealand, there is much better recognition of the Maori people's indigenous forms of justice. This is not necessarily the case for all indigenous communities.

One thing that stands out in Canada - this is something the Travellers in Prison Initiative is also recommending - is the introduction of Gladue reports. Gladue reports are used in Canada in order to inform a judge about the circumstances of an indigenous person coming before the court. It provides not just the background of the person as an individual but as an indigenous person and member of an ethnic community who is highly disadvantaged and who has experienced structural racism and the impacts of that throughout their life. It is directed towards trying to ensure that prison is the option of absolute last resort for that community. The system, as it is implemented in Canada, is not perfect. It is a federal system. Different states approach it differently and resource it in different ways. At the very least, it provides the possibility, and it is being improved all the time, of ensuring that judges have a more fulsome understanding of the people who come before them, particularly when we live in a society in which stereotypes of the Traveller community and misinformation abounds and impacts all of us. This refers to even those of us, the privileged few, who have opportunities to learn directly from the community.

I want to comment on something Professor Haynes said. Systemic racism exists across our criminal justice system. When we look across Irish society, we can see that systemic racism towards the Traveller community is embedded across the various institutions. A situation like that perpetuates negative and unjust outcomes. It is not up to the community to be more trusting of institutions, including those in the criminal justice system. It is up to the criminal justice system, particularly those who work in the criminal justice system, and the responsibility of the State to earn and build the trust of the community. Trust-building requires recognising that there is systemic racism embedded within our institutions. Without that recognition, we are not going to move further forward as a society.

I thank Dr.Joyce for that. I have a few questions. The witnesses mentioned stop and search. There is a system in Northern Ireland where people are given a little ticket. This does not stop discriminatory stop-and-search activities. We know from those tickets that it is happening proportionately in very strong nationalist areas and in areas where there are republicans. We know it is endemic and does not lead to great results. Who, if they know they are going to be stopped and searched every day, is going to have anything in their vehicle? However, at least there are hard statistics and the evidence is not anecdotal. I would be interested in Professor Haynes' view as to whether she feels that would be a simple step to introduce here in order to have accurate data.

Yes. Once we recognise what a problem is, we can start to advocate for addressing and developing solutions for it. We are not even at the stage in this country where we can do that. Not only do we not have data on the ethnicity of people who are stopped and searched, including members of the Traveller community, we do not have records of stop-and-search activities.

I should be done for everybody. We should not take an ethnic identifier. If those who are stopped and searched want to come forward then, they can do so. I deal with Travellers all the time. One slight concern I have is that it would be like being stopped and asked if you are from the Gaeltacht. It is like the day I was stopped in London. I was going to visit a certain famous historic place and I was asked where I was from. When I said I was from Ireland, I was asked if it was the North or the South. I replied that I was from the west. I was asked again if I was from Northern Ireland or southern Ireland and I said I was from Ireland. Some people do not want to give a prescribed identifier. I do not know how prevalent that is, but I have seen that Travellers want to be treated the same as everybody else. I do not see why they must identify all the time. They also fear that if they do identify, it could be used against them.

Those are really good points. If we adopt the principle that we need to be recording ethnicity around stop and search, we can examine the different options that are available. There are different options available, including self-identification, which is the approach we would advocate for.

I completely accept what the Chair said. There is a fundamental issue around, as Dr. Joyce said, not just trusting in the criminal justice system but the trustworthiness of that system. I note also the reason we have Traveller ethnicity recorded as part of the census is because the Traveller community advocated for that.

There are a number of different approaches that can be taken. The legislation that has been drafted in respect of recording people being stopped and searched does not incorporate an ethnic identifier. If it is enacted, we will have recording of people being stopped and searched for the first time in the State. However, as it stands, we will not have the recording of an ethnic identifier. At this stage in our development, it is incredible that we would miss this opportunity and put through the legislation and actively choose to omit an ethnic identifier. That is not just for the Traveller community but for all of ethnic minorities in this country.

We will move on. One thing that keeps becoming apparent is the huge number of prisoners who, in general, go in for less than a year. That includes a very high number of Travellers. Of course, in most cases, sentences of less than a year are perceived as counterproductive because people do not get any education or training. It is hard to engage in such a short period. There is a view that we would be better off with alternatives.

Have we a figure or a percentage?

We will try to pull that up for the Leas-Chathaoirleach now. We were lucky to get data from the Irish Prison Service, which was extremely helpful to us. We got a snapshot of the people who are in prison in Ireland. Of course, the Irish Prison Service is the only part of the criminal justice system at the moment that operates an ethnic identifier. I know there are gaps in the data but at least the Prison Service has begun the process, which is to its great credit. Representatives of the Prison Service were extremely helpful to me.

I will give the Deputy an example. We were given information about the prison population on a particular day in November. There was a woman in prison for refusing to comply with an instruction from a garda. I cannot understand, as someone who teaches criminal justice and who knows that the principles underlying our justice system are those of rehabilitation and reintegration, why a prison sentence would be given to an individual for refusing to obey an instruction from a garda. Rather than looking at the prison figures, I would ask why that woman is in prison. How many times has her house been raided by the Garda?

There was a point to my question. I accept what has been said. It is a different subset that I will be focusing on. We have to take actions that reduce the number of short-term offenders who are in prison. It would be of great assistance to Travellers because they form a disproportionate number of those offenders. I am speaking about both men and women because we know that many women are in prison for shoplifting or theft of one type of another. Are Travellers mainly in prison for theft, assault or public order? What are the main offences for which they are in prison? Do we know?

Yes. Some of the data we acquired from the Prison Service related to the top five offences for which, for example, women Travellers were carrying out a sentence on the day the service provided us with this snapshot data. For non-Traveller women, the top offences were theft, murder, robbery, assault and assault causing harm, manslaughter and the possession of drugs. For Travellers, the top offences were theft, robbery, indecent assault and assault. What we are seeing there is that overall, non-Travellers are in prison for very serious offences, such as murder, which is the second-highest ranked offence, manslaughter and assault causing harm, while Travellers are in prison, in particular, for theft. On the day in question, there were 16 Traveller women in prison and 11 of them were in prison for theft.

We in this country talk a lot about minimal criminalisation and ensuring that we use custody as a measure of last resort. The degree to which that actually happens in practice is questionable. The degree to which it is happening in respect of Travellers is highly questionable. What is shown by the prison data we have is that there is greater similarity across ethnicity for Travellers and between men and women in terms of what they are in prison for whereas for the non-Traveller population, it is more about gender. Men are in prison for different offences than women. Overall, Travellers are in prison for more minor offences than non-Travellers. That must be addressed.

Canada has a provision that states that for the indigenous community in particular, custodial sentences should be avoided by every means possible. The degree to which that is implemented in practice is another matter but those are the types of provisions that we need to be moving towards. We then need to monitor their effective implementation. I agree with the Leas-Chathaoirleach.

Fr. Micheál Mac Gréil and others carried out sociological work. Fr. Mac Gréil carried out a detailed and comparative study. He could have told you about every group in Irish society, including non-Irish, Irish, unionists and everybody else. Therefore, you could see that Travellers came out the worst. We know that societal attitudes are very anti-Traveller. We have been naive to believe that people leave private attitudes outside the door when they go to work. That is a totally naive concept. Therefore, it is my belief that it is likely that people in various positions within the State bring their prejudices to work. It is equally likely that we will not find official racial profiling in the way we might like to think it happens. We are not going to find it on a file. We are not going to find systemic evidence of it. Profiling is informal, which is much harder to deal with. Would the witnesses agree that I might be correct in that? If I take everything from An Garda Síochána, I am not going to a find a form that asks if a person was picked on for being a Traveller. It is the more informal stuff. We all know that in society, the informal implementation of prejudices is much harder to get at but much more insidious.

I agree. Codified racism is the problem with which we are dealing. That is not always the case because as Professor Schweppe said, anti-Traveller racism continues, unfortunately, to be particularly acceptable in Irish society. Our report includes, for example, many direct quotations from Travellers who talked about members of the Garda and different people within the courts having used anti-Traveller language in front of them and racist slurs towards them. It plays a role in provocation, which also contributes to arrest rates. Codified racism is a particular problem. It is one of the reasons we need equality data. We need to monitor not what the policies say is happening but what is happening in practice. That is the nature of the work we do in the European Centre for the Study of Hate. It is about acknowledging that there is often a gap between what people do and experience in practice and what the policy states should happen. Mr. Joyce may want to come in.

On racial profiling, whether it is official policy or not, if it is endemic through an institution, it is there and needs to be challenged, whether through cultural competency training or a top-down approach. We have the statistics from the report, which show that 59% of people who were stopped believe they were racially profiled because they were a Traveller. When we asked them why that was the case, 78% said that the person stopping them knew they were a Traveller. That is very much the perception.

That is why I am concerned when the Garda Commissioner says he does not accept the assertion that racial profiling happens. Where is his evidence? We have the evidence of Travellers, through the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, EUFRA, study, our own study, the EU migration information and data analysis system, MIDAS, study, which speaks to-----

I want to ask a question, particularly of people working on the ground who have experience. People come to me with a complaint about a hospital or anything. Some are willing to go the long road but my experience is that many people want a quick fix. Complaints processes can take forever. Making a complaint to the Ombudsman takes much longer than it used to. The processes are much more complex. We keep adding to the processes. Most people get worn out by the system. If I might say so, people who are not as digitally involved find it harder to keep with the pace. This is why people from disadvantaged backgrounds often seek the assistance of a TD. It is because we will do the work for them. This might apply to means testing. The first port of call must be to try to eliminate the need for a complaint. This is the easiest solution for everybody.

Are there are ways we could improve the process to make dealing with clearer complaints more summary and quicker to deal with? We had the same thing with the Language Commissioner yesterday, whereby some complaints are easily dealt with and the office informally gets on and tries to resolve the complaint there and then. It is only if it cannot be done that it goes into the long and tortuous process that would wear out anybody. I am especially interested in hearing from the people who work on the ground. How much do we know about people getting worn out by the complaint process itself?

The Leas-Chathaoirleach has made the very pertinent point that often people get worn out by the process. He also said they will seek help from a TD or a local councillor. A large part of this comes back to accountability for the person and to protection. A fear of retaliation by a judge or garda, or by the Garda or the Judiciary, came from the participants in the research. This was a key reason for not using the complaints system that is in place. It speaks to a lack of trust in the systems. It also speaks to a belief that nothing would come of it. It is important to say the lack of awareness of how to begin the process of making a complaint came up a lot. While the structures are there, there is a lack of trust in them, there is a fear of retaliation and there is a lack of awareness of them. All of these need to be addressed.

I am not only speaking about Traveller community complaints. I am speaking about people from various socioeconomic groups making complaints. Most people will make a social welfare appeal and the system is fairly clear cut. They might not be happy with the outcome but they will do it. There are other types of complaints where people feel the process is tortuous. Therefore, the issue of a quicker process for simpler issues comes to the fore. We tend to add layers of bureaucracy to everything, which would wear out anybody.

There are always benefits to looking at the complaints process. The accessibility of the complaints process is something we need to look at. At present it is very digitally oriented. All of the information that is available is available is online, for example. For a community that experiences educational disadvantage and digital disadvantage, this is particularly problematic. Fiosrú will have public awareness-raising functions and we very much hope it will specifically target the Traveller community to help them to learn and to learn from them what would be the most accessible way to make a complaint and the assistance that might be needed. It is the same with the judicial conduct council.

Overall the complaints system is simply being underused by Travellers at present. This is my major concern. This is very important. When we speak at various events, we often encounter people from An Garda Síochána who come to the events because they are the committed individuals who are trying to make progress in their organisations. This means we are preaching to the choir. The complaints process is very important for those individuals who perhaps are not coming on board with the idea of being a learning organisation.

At present, as Mr. Joyce said, there is an enormous fear of retaliation. It is very difficult. I do not have a solution to it at present. There is no way to protect the identity of the complainant in either of the complaints processes at present. A judge against whom a complaint is made will be told the identity of the complainant before it has even been determined whether the complainant is legitimate enough to be considered. With regard to the police, we still have a system where police investigate police. Even under the newly established Fiosrú and under the new legislation, an unknown proportion of complaints will simply be delegated to An Garda Síochána for it to investigate complaints about itself. How can we ask a community that already feels overpoliced as suspects and underpoliced as victims to trust a complaints process where their identity will be known and where they will be investigated by the people against whom they are making the complaints? This is the fundamental problem.

I want to ask about confidence in the justice system for outcomes when Travellers are victims of crime. I know it is a wider point. As a caveat, in the North we have hate crime legislation and we have Judge Marrinan's review, which I hope we will update. Our outcome rates for hate crime reporting languish in the low teens. There is a lack of confidence in minority communities about reporting them. Do the witnesses think the hate crime legislation is an opportunity to provide some additional confidence for Travellers in policing and accessing justice?

That will very much depend on the response Travellers get when they walk into a Garda station. Mr. Joyce has to hand all of the numbers from our research. A significant proportion of victims of crime, almost half of the survey respondents, had been the victim of a crime. This is a very high rate of victimisation in the community. A relatively high number of these reported but their experiences were not as good as that of the general population when they report a crime. I honestly cannot see a reason the response of a garda would be to take a person seriously, bring them in and sit them down if it is a hate crime but not if it is an assault, domestic violence or sexual violence that is being reported. These are all crimes the people who spoke to us said they had walked into a Garda station to report but were not taken seriously.

I do not see how the presence of hate crime legislation would make the blindest bit of difference to Garda responses. It will create an expectation in the community that, when a hate crime is recorded, it will be taken seriously, will be responded to and will be investigated. I do not know whether the presence of legislation on the Statute Book has ever had an instantaneous response. The former Minister of State at the Department of Justice might correct me. I do not think any legislation has had an instantaneous Garda response of suddenly taking something seriously. We are very knowledgeable about the hate crime legislation in the European Centre for the Study of Hate. We have worked on evidencing the need for hate crime legislation as well as implementation measures.

It will create a huge expectation on the part of the community. I do not know whether that expectation will be met. On the basis of the data we have, however, it will not be.

One of the things we found really interesting was that while Travellers were very willing to continuously try to engage, as victims, with the police, 80% of Travellers who reported a crime to the Garda said their report was not taken seriously; 67% said that when they reported they were not treated respectfully; and 15% were satisfied with the service provided when they reported a crime. These are worrying statistics.

How would that set of figures compare with figures for people living in highly disadvantaged areas who are not Travellers? Generally in rural Ireland, there is respect and interaction, or there used to be when gardaí were in the community because people knew the gardaí who lived there. They were part of the community and attended community events. More modern policing is removing that connection. I think we could have a kickback on that in time. Allowing that that has not been the pattern in highly disadvantaged areas, do we have any statistical knowledge of whether non-Travellers in the same communities - west Tallaght, Castlepark in Galway or wherever - face or perceive the same reaction to their complaints?

That is a really good question. I can say that the level of satisfaction with the Garda among members of the general population when they report a crime is very high, with 61% satisfied compared with 15% of Travellers. I do not have the specific figures offhand but the data on public satisfaction comes from the Garda public attitudes survey. The data are broken down by age, gender and social class, if I remember correctly. I do not believe there are striking differences. There are some differences by social class but not to the degree that we see with the Traveller community.

We know that six parishes in Dublin provide a totally disproportionate number of the prison population in Dublin. They cannot all be Travellers. Class is a broad brush. I am more interested in getting the data broken down by postal address as that might give a slightly different result. I am curious to learn what the difference is.

I would like to find out whether, in the same housing estates, the non-Traveller population experiences half that level, one third of it or whatever, or if there is a slight difference with the rest of the community. I have lived in different communities in my life. I deal with people from all sorts of communities and I see different attitudes not so much driven by so-called social class but by geography.

That is really expensive research to do. We would love to do it but significant zeros would be needed after the first funding figure if we were to conduct that sort of house-to-house general population survey, broken down by ethnicity and with a diversity booster, as mentioned. That is a huge amount of research that would have to be funded by the Department of Justice.

On the Traveller experience with the police, we did not find significant differences by county. Our sample comes from 25 of 26 counties and we have not found significant differences by county. For Travellers at least, this is not an issue of the locality. I am not suggesting that it may not be an issue in particular localities. That is a really interesting research question which we would love to explore but for Travellers this is not a matter of geography.

I will also mention something in relation to victims of crime because this it is an important statement to make. One of the matters that was really discouraging people from contacting the Garda when they were victims of crime was the practice that many of our participants reported of gardaí who came to their home, particularly to halting sites or group housing, taking the opportunity to look for evidence of unlawful behaviour when they were called out by a victim of a crime. This means that victims of crime have the sense that they are, potentially, bringing the gardaí "down on the people around them". That is the phrase that is often referred to and it is a real obstacle for people to ask for help as victims of crime.

I will add to that statement by reading a quote from one of our interviewees during our research around that relationship and the Garda. The person stated:

I’d describe the relationship [between Travellers and the gardaí as] similar to that between the RUC and the nationalist community in the north … The lack of trust. You know, the way the community was treated, that when the gards did come down, they usually came down in force. You know, they didn’t see Travellers as victims. You know, there seemed to be no victims in the Traveller community as far as the Gards was concerned. It was they’re all perpetrators, you know, that they didn’t mind who they arrested, and I’ve seen that happen, you know?

That is the type of relationship that we are looking at between the Traveller community and An Garda Síochána. It is not for the community to build upon that. It should not be on the community to advocate for their right to access to justice. That is the responsibility of the State.

Are there no further questions, I thank Dr. Sindy Joyce, Mr. David Joyce, Professor Hayes and Professor Schweppe for their contributions. We may only have a few weeks left of the Dáil. We are looking to put forward quick, simple recommendations because we need change. At the end of the day, while we can go all over the place, the one place where we can actually effect change is by legislation and the only place in this State to do that is in this House. The committee will try to make practical differences although they may be small steps. We are not going to change the world overnight but we can make practical differences and if we make enough small differences, they will amount to quite a bit over time.

Next week, at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 10 October, we will meet the Commissioner for Human Rights for the Council of Europe, Mr. Michael O'Flaherty, to discuss issues pertaining to the human rights of Travellers and Roma. I propose that the committee adjourn until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 8 October, when we will hold a virtual private meeting. We will have our next public meeting at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 10 October. Is that agreed? Agreed.