Several Roma families forced to share room, Pavee Point event hears

Levels of poverty among the Roma community are so extreme that in many case several families share a single room, a Roma advocate has said.

Pavee Point community development worker Gabi Muntean, speaking at an event organised at the centre to mark International Roma and Traveller Day yesterday, said she had met families in Dublin who “have nothing”.

She said they were not entitled to any benefits, including child benefit for children born here.

Some were in such poverty they were wary of sending their children to school, for fear they would be taken into care. Children who did go to school often did not want to be collected by their parents, as they feared being bullied at school if classmates saw them.

“The parents are afraid sometime even to send the children to school because they have no money to give them lunch or buy school books, and are afraid they will lose their children.

"They are in many cases living in extreme poverty, in overcrowded conditions. But even this is better than the lives they would have in Romania. "

She urged all Roma to fill in the census on April 24th and to self-identify as “Roma” in the question on cultural or ethnic identity.

A short information film was shown at the event, advising people why they should fill in their census form, telling them the information gathered would be used to plan for the future, and would be confidential. Their information would not be shared with their landlord, the Department of Social Protection or the Garda, it said.

Chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Emily Logan said human rights was sometimes described as a "visibility project".

"It's about seeing each other . . . about seeing people who are never seen and seeing groups of people who are easy to ignore. And certainly that has been my experience in my short time as chief commissioner, in working with the Traveller and Roma community in Ireland. is our ability to ignore these groups and we have done that for years." Her experience, she said, was also informed by the Roma people she had met, including the two families whose children were removed by the Garda in 2013 after their skin, eye and hair colour aroused suspicions about their parentage.

The families were forced to undergo DNA testing to prove their link to the children, after which they were returned to their parents.

“Those families were in a terrible state of distress but what stood out for me was the strength and the pride of the people who sat in front of me, despite this horrible abuse of human rights that had happened to them.”