Michael Higgins Praises Travellers Contribution to Irish Society

I wanted to add my own 2 cents here.

I went to school with a few travellers and had many small interactions with them growing up and some of these experiences were negative.

I will say I have changed my view of travellers to a certain extent, not sure why exactly but I think the older you get the more life experience you have and you start to reflect upon things with more nuance and insight. There are a few experiences with travellers that stand out in my mind however.

My father told me that donkeys years ago he was on a night out and ended being attacked by some fella (not a traveller), he got hurt and ended up on the ground and the other fella was going to kick him in the head and could have caused serious damage. Some traveller, whom he didn't really know, jumped in to stop the guy kicking my father in the head.

I worked in Tesco for a few years when I was a student. A traveller fella around my age at the time (19) was shopping for hair gel and asked me if the tub he had in his hand was hair gel, he said he couldn't read and wanted to be sure. He asked me in a fairly casual way but I could see in his eyes that he was embarrassed and ashamed at saying this. Also during this period, outside the supermarket one day there was a massive queue for the ATM (something you don't see nowadays). I'd never seen it so long before and wondered what was up. A colleague told me afterwards that there was a traveller fella using the ATM and for whatever reason the bank had changed the layout of the options on the screen when you put in your card. The fella couldn't read and he was too embarrassed to ask the person next to him for help so he just froze and stood there unsure what to do until the person beside him stepped and asked if he wanted help. It was then he explained he was able to work the machine with the previous layout but now it was changed he couldn't figure it out.

My mother worked in a shop in a petrol garage years ago. There was a traveller I went to school with who used to go in there from time to time. I thought this fella was a scumbag and I had heard of him robbing people at school. I was very surprised then when my mother told me that he was very nice and polite to her every time he came into the shop, that they kept an eye on him because they thought he might steal something, but he never did. My mother said the guy smelled bad and she guessed that he had been rummaging about in the dump looking for stuff that had some value (the dump was close enough to the shop). She said he also used to pay with 1 pence and 5 pence coins that he had found here and there. What stood out in my mind as most surprising though is that he never bought chocolate or sweets or anything with this money but always went for the nutritious stuff like yoghurts. I didn't know any young lad of that age (12-13) who would choose something like yoghurts over sweets if they had the choice.

I know some people will say they don't have sympathy for travellers who can't read because they have the opportunity to go to school and they should make the most of it. To a certain extent this is true. But as someone also said earlier I can't imagine what it does to your development as a person when almost everyone, everywhere you go looks down upon you, and regards you as a piece of ****. Growing up like this doesn't produce an environment conducive to fitting it or embracing the settled community.

In terms of actual contribution to Irish society, in my opinion the greatest piece of Irish music ever was written by a traveller - The Lonesome Boatman by The Fureys, written by Finbarr Furey. There are a couple of different versions if you're looking it up. We, Irish, are genuinely much more artistic and creative than most people across the world. I've been living outside Ireland for over 10 years now so I feel I can confidently say that. This was an interesting personal revelation for myself to acknowledge that it was a traveller who wrote one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard. It made me think to myself, maybe we need to look at things afresh and re-evaluate a lot of things about our society in general.

so he should, it is a good thing.

ah the journal.ie is nothing more than a lobbyist group for pavee point at this stage.

You just know its Pavee point forking out to fund these so called newsworthy articles when the rest of them fail miserably to generate any funding whatsoever.

I've a neighbour right across from me who's been stealing dogs for the past year, and is currently still awaiting trial for stealing dogs which has been delayed due to covid. He's banned from keep dogs but he's still churning through 2-3 dogs a week if not more. Yet somehow the journal and Pavee point will still turn this into a non-traveler issue.