How to fix the traveller community

Costing a fortune for the Government in many ways. In 2010 there was €130m payed out to travellers for a variety of projects. Then you have welfare payments too.

I don't agree that microaggression towards travellers is due to an opinion that nothing they do is good enough. Let's face facts, the community has serious problems. Many people fear travellers because there is unfortunately a cohort of travellers who are intimidating, involved in criminal activity and violence.

Unfortunately, this reflects badly on the whole community because the "bad eggs" are the ones who are regularly making the headlines.

Fair play to you for taking the more difficult path, we need more travellers like you. There are too many who take the "easy" option of social welfare or crime. Sorry but that's the truth.

It is terrible that you find it difficult to get work because you're a traveller, but it's your own peers you need to blame for that attitude existing. Too many people have had a bad experience with members of the travelling community. My own father owned a country pub years ago. Serving travellers was a no no because it invariably led to trouble. He served a traveller man who was on his own one day who swore he wouldn't cause trouble and was only having one. Within 15 minutes a large group of travellers had taken over the pub. They were all served a couple of drinks before being asked to finish up because things were getting rowdy. After their last drink, they left but not before ripping all the urinals and sinks off the walls in the men's toilets.

I don't envy your position, trying to get an honest job and participate in society but being turned away because of your background. Keep at it though, you'll meet an employer who sees you for the hard worker you are eventually. Lead by example and hopefully more members of the travelling community will change and more members of the settled community will hold less prejudice.

Best way to solve the traveller problem is to focus on the children and their future.

Make it mandatory that they must attend school. Assign a school place and fine the parents heavily for every day of school missed.

Pay children's allowance in vouchers that can only be spent on things like food and children's clothes etc. That's for everyone not just travellers.

To remove the criminal influence from their lives we must reform the criminal justice system. At the moment lawyers have a financial interest in keeping repeat criminals in the community. Implement a 3 strike rule. After three convictions you get the maximum sentence for the crime without discretion by the judge and without early release. That will benefit not only traveller children but children across the country who will have the single most negative influence in their lives removed.

I am going out on a limb, but historically minorities and or emigrant groups have for the most part tried to create a better more prosperous potential for their children by being able to provide them with an education and skill.

That is not happening with the traveller community. The ones that have embraced self improvement (defined as being relative compared to a life of welfare by choice), do not appear to have been motivated or encouraged by family.

Why would you push your children towards a "better life", whereby they would have to work to pay for medical, housing etc?

My parents were of the barefoot to school generation (born 1921). They wanted better for us.

Vicious circle not unique to travellers, where working the welfare system gives a comfortable lifestyle.

How to fix them? Stop enabling them.

Forcibly ensure that they are held to the same laws, rules and regulations as the rest of us, in the long run that will result in a community that actually integrates with the rest of society.

realistically and from long experience it isn't the few bad apples that are spoiling the reputation for the traveler community ,its the vast majority that are doing that.

until an substantive amount of travellers decide they want to be a part of normal society then they will always be a problem for the rest of us.

if you want t rush that process then apply the same standards to them as everyone else .... ie funding cuts and jail for misbehavior.

Dole increasing while taxes for those paying taxes is also increasing. The dole should be a temporary crutch to support you if you legitimately loose your job. Pay much higher for a temporary period of a few months for those who have paid a minimum number of weeks of tax (let’s say 5 years) while employed. All others who have not worked should never be better off than those on minimum wage and that dole needs cutting back. Include all the other benefits in calculations.

Its far from just a traveller problem. But no government (current FF/FG, future SF) will dare touch the dole or they will be torn apart.

I would still link increased dole to number of kids but to a max of 2 (the average number of kids per family in the country). The state should not fund any more. Same for working people.

One thing sticks out. We have had a huge influx of foreign nationals of every colour and creed and culture in the last 20 years. Many (not all) of their kids have succeeded where their parents had not. Education worked for these kids. Plenty of working Chinese, Polish, Nigerian, Malaysian people all educated here. If racism was central to the issue, then I would have thought these would be the first to suffer. Your education breaks down so many employment barriers as it can’t be argued with.

My solution: If we want to fix social issues throughout the state, then education has to be the core fix.

The current system does not suit everyone (rote learning) so tailor it to allow apprenticeship to even younger people while in school of sorts to get a minimum grade of education. It means an overhaul of the education system, which will be unpalatable to many.

The Tec’s were supposed to do this (prepare for apprenticeship) but despite many being Deis schools with good funding, don’t achieve this as they are judged on their grades like all other schools. Your local wannabe tradesman (tradeswoman is genuine missed opportunity) should be knocking at the door to get in here if done correctly. A genuine stepping stone towards owning your own business as a tradesman. Imagine a state that can build houses without having to import half of another country.

IMO the overly generous welfare system is preventing many people, not just travellers from wanting to better themselves. Why can't we ask unemployed people which are more than a year unemployed to contribute to their community by doing one day volunteering a week. If they don't want to do it simply half their benefits.

I am a teacher, teaching 10 years in a school in a disadvantaged area. A sizeable minority of the students I teach have no aspiration to work, instead aim for a life on social welfare as this is what they see their family doing. If I ask these students whats the benefit in working they only ever see money, they never can see that it might be good for their self esteem and mental health and they only ever see themselves earning minimum wage. They never see that as a starting point of their working career. I was so sickened to hear of plans in the budget to increase welfare and increase taxes for the working. Some of my students families seem to have a lot more disposable cash than many working families and this is VERY wrong.

A lot of people voted for Casey because he seemed to tell the truth even if it wasn't politically correct didn't back down on it.

How many people would genuinely welcome a halting site next door. I bet a lot lower percentage than was seemingly represented by the presidential candidates.

It wasn't particularly anything to do with travellers but it had more to do with the credibility of other candidates which was damaged when they all said they'd be happy with a halting site next door.

Michael D said it too but most people had made up their mind to vote for him before the campaign. I'm pretty sure short of Michael D turning up for the debates in a Nazi uniform he would have won.

Many people did not vote for FG or FF in the last election but they still managed to get into government because the 3 current parties in government came together to keep SF (who had the highest % of votes) out. The problem really is that none of the parties would dare try suggesting welfare rates are too high as they see that as a means to losing votes. Joan Burton suggested some years ago that people were choosing social welfare as a lifestyle choice and she was attacked and eventually lost her seat.

If someone actually sat down and worked out the total costs of welfare to an average family it wold probably be eye watering. Also I believe there is alot of fraud within the system that needs to be weeded out.

https://www.joe.ie/uncategorized/joan-burton-pladges-to-stop-social-welfare-becoming-a-lifestyle-choice-25940

As people have said Education is the key to helping therefore it should be tied into children's allowances etc.

Simply put..if you want to get children's allowance (at school age obviously) at this point tie it into school attendance for every child. (and not just traveler children)

Implement a biometric system where each child scans in the morning and scans out in the evening. Yes I know the privacy advocates will be up in arms about it but we need a system we can rely on to cut out fraud and ensure that children get signed in and not immediately go back out.

At present the kids have no chance whatsoever of a future bar the current traveller culture one and its extremely rare that so many break free of it so kudos to the Op for taking the step.

Can I ask you a fairly personal question irish2021traveller? What level of education did you manage to achieve yourself? I mean no disrespect but the grammar and spelling in your posts would make me think you probably never got beyond a Junior Cert?

I'd suggest that not only should all children (traveller or settled) be educated to Leaving Certificate as a minimum (the LCVP catering for the non-academic amongst us), one of the greatest services we as a society could provide to the traveller community would be further investment in Adult education. I'm sure there must be many traveller men and women who regret being pulled out of education by their parents in their early teens. "No more school" sounds like a great thing to a 14 year old, once he/she's a grown adult, however, it holds them back in many ways and I'd hazard a guess there are many older travellers who wish they'd stuck with it.

A total reform of our welfare system is needed: Job Seekers should be able to claim a percentage of their most recent salary for a limited duration (say 6 months at 60 or 70% of your last salary - if the salary was high, the person will have paid high amounts of PRSI that would cover this), with levels for those who haven't worked or who haven't been able to find employment again being based on the effort they've put into making themselves employable: a degree, trade or other third-level qualification qualifying you for the maximum amount, a leaving certificate the second highest, a junior cert an amount below that and no junior cert or equivalent education the lowest payment level.

Children's allowance I'd scrap entirely as it costs a fortune to administer and could easily be replaced with a tax credit for those in employment or an increase in the social welfare allowances for children of the unemployed. Those credits/additional allowances should be dependent on the child's attendance at school.

I reckon not only would these two measures encourage more travellers to keep their children in school and give them a far better chance at making a good life for themselves, it'd have the same influence on those in the settled community who are making themselves unemployable.