Report on High Percentage of Traveller Unemployment

https://kildare-nationalist.ie/2021/04/08/president-michael-d-higgins-sends-messages-of-solidarity-to-travellers-and-roma/

In the message, President Higgins reflects on progress made towards achieving the rights of Traveller and Roma communities and highlights the many areas in which progress has been insufficient.
"Far too many challenges remain for Travellers and Roma. The bitter fruits of a failure of State policy are manifold, where it existed. Submission to narrow, exclusionary, property-based, and most unrepublican populist sentiments, in far too many Local Authorities, stand as indictments on Irish society past and present. Our failure for so long to address, with compassion and understanding, the needs of the Travelling community has of course been recognised recently as a failure to meet our obligations, including those under the European Social Charter.

“The statistics are appalling in terms of what has persisted as exclusion. Today, only 14 percent of Traveller women have completed secondary education, compared to 83 percent in the general population. Some 60 percent of Traveller men have not progressed beyond primary level in education. This is compared to 13 percent in the general population.

“Yes, it is true that the number of Travellers with third-level qualifications has doubled in the last number of years, and that is to be welcomed – what a great achievement it is, ground-breaking and exemplary – but this represents just over a half of one percent of the Traveller population. The figure for the general population with third-level qualifications is now 47 percent.

“Any general population, with a concept of citizenship and justice, should be concerned at the significant proportion of their fellow citizens from special groups that are being regularly excluded, generation after generation.

“The failure to achieve a full participation, while respecting the features of a recognised ethnic group, should concern us all. It has had results in every area of contemporary Irish society.

“Male members of the Travelling community are ten times more likely to be in the prison system, while females are up to twenty times more likely. Unemployment among Travellers remains at multiple levels of the State average. Life expectancy for Travellers is at least ten years lower than the general population. Infant mortality is considerably higher, and Traveller men are over six times more likely to die by suicide than men in the general population.

“Following years of marginalisation and poor living conditions, Travellers continue to experience higher levels of chronic disease such as asthma, stroke, heart disease and respiratory disease, making them in our present conditions so much more vulnerable to COVID-19.