VB: When did you first become conscious of being a Traveller, of being different from the rest of Irish society?
MC: When I started going to school in St Kevin's, Finglas. My brother and I were the only two Travellers in the school. This was in 1973-74. Unfortunately, I was made aware of my Traveller identity in negative ways - the usual name-calling and sometimes beatings. I remember being called "knacker" very early in my school days and a "smelly knacker".
VB: What kind of house did you live in at Finglas when you were a child?
MC: It was one of the very first group housing schemes to be constructed. The material that was used in the construction was of very poor quality. They weren't called houses, they were usually called tigeens. This was a little tin box with one large room and one room which led to a toilet. It was really very basic. The idea was that Travellers would move into these, get very accustomed to it and then begin to demand proper housing. It was very much seen as a stepping stone towards assimilation and integration.
However, by the 1980s the local authorities began to see that this policy of gradual assimilation was not working and they began to provide decent accommodation for Travellers, taking account of our different culture. VB: Why did assimilation and integration not work?
MC: Just to give a bit of the background to this. In 1960 Charles Haughey, then Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Justice, set up the Commission on Itinerancy, which published its report in 1963. The main thrust of that report was very much about viewing Travellers as an itinerant problem, a problem that needed to be solved through "rehabilitation", "assimilation" and "integration", to use the words of the report. There was absolutely no acknowledgement whatsoever throughout that report of the culture, identity, language, customs or values of the Traveller community.
That report had a huge influence on government, local authority, church and educational thinking - the whole thrust of policy became the integration and assimilation of the Traveller community, the obliteration of the Traveller identity.
This was particularly true in the educational system. I went to school for six years and, OK, I came out at the end of it with the basic literacy skills which have stood me well. But for those six years at no time was Traveller identity in any way endorsed or validated or celebrated. Not for one moment.
VB: What is the Traveller identity?
MC: Like all identities when you put it under the microscope or, if you like, when you interrogate an identity it becomes very vague. Like the Irish identity. It's an intangible thing. It is very difficult.
VB: Have a go.
MC: It relates to how people feel about themselves, how they perceive themselves, their own communities, how they perceive outsiders, how do we relate to ourselves.
But on the question of whether there is a distinct Traveller identity, I think that the debate has actually been won. It is recognised in the Equal Status Act, which includes a very good definition of what it means to be a Traveller, and we don't want to get involved in renegotiating something that has already been achieved.
There was an important landmark case in England recently. Eight Irish Travellers were refused access to pubs and the question in the case was whether Irish Travellers constituted a distinct ethnic group under the Race Relations Act. The court held that they did constitute a distinct ethnic group under the Race Relations Act and are now afforded full protection under the Act. VB: Why is it so important for Travellers to be free to move from one place to another at will?
MC: The Commission on Itinerancy said that the nomadic lifestyle was deviant - they may not have used that word but that was the line and in some quarters of Irish society that is still the line.
VB: Explain why it is so important.
MC: I'll tell you now in a second. It is important to recognise that there have been lots of different attempts by Irish society to kill it [nomadic lifestyle] off. I think nomadism in itself has changed dramatically over the years. There are a small minority of Travellers, small, very small, who travel continuously, all year round. Then there are a larger number of Travellers who engage only in seasonal travel, if you like, who would travel mostly during the summer.
That's when we get all the controversies and all the flashpoints and that's primarily during the summertime. Then you have another group of Travellers who could be living permanently in one location for 15 or 20 years but have never lost the urge to move. Some people, although they might be living for 15 years in one location, still need to take to the road. It is maybe more of a state of mind than anything else and of course Travellers, like everyone else, are more mobile nowadays. Perhaps the main reason nowadays for moving around is economic - in search of jobs, although in the Celtic Tiger jobs are plentiful and Travellers are living permanently more often.
VB: What are the non-economic reasons for moving from place to place?
MC: I think it's to visit, to be with relatives in other parts of the country. To be closer to a sick or dying relative, weddings, funerals . . .
VB: You don't have to move the whole shebang for that, which would be only for a few days.
MC: From a Traveller's perspective, it can be longer and this might sound like a cliche but for many Travellers it is the journey that matters, being on the road with their families and extended families. It's growth and development and camaraderie, it's all that stuff that happens on the journey. VB: What's so enjoyable about the journey?
MC: Travellers attach a lot of importance to it. Also there is the fact that if Travellers feel tied to one location it puts pressure on them. There has been a lot of research about Gypsies and their desire to be on the move and it has been shown that when they're restricted all sorts of social problems arise and it is the same for Travellers.
VB: Aren't you making unreasonable demands on society as a whole? You are demanding not just accommodation on the same basis as everyone else but you are demanding accommodation wherever it is you think you might like to wander to?
MC: I think that to date the focus has been on meeting the needs of the settled population and I don't think it is unreasonable to make some different provision for the Travelling community. All that is required is the provision of some transient sites, in addition to the more permanent halting sites.
VB: Do Travellers have to cause such chaos when they move from one place to another as was caused at the Sugar Loaf a few summers ago and as was caused by the convoy of Travellers who made their way across the country to Knock last summer?
MC: I do not condone and Pavee Point does not condone the behaviour of any Traveller which is anti-social. We would not defend or justify that, it's indefensible. The absence of transient halting sites does cause problems and were they available then I think that many of the problems - the chaos, as you call it - could be avoided.
VB: Take the case of the Sugar Loaf. What explanation is there for the awful mess that was left there two summers ago?
MC: I mean if there's no provision being made, if there's no refuse bins available . . .
VB: Why did they have to desecrate the Sugar Loaf? It's one of the country's beauty spots.
MC: My understanding is that it's a tradition. They've been going there for donkey's years.
VB: To the Sugar Loaf?
MC: Oh, yes. Seemingly that's the information I have and I think it is possible to continue doing that. I think it can be managed. Generally speaking, we must recognise that most Travellers do, you'll always get a small element within a minority who will behave in an anti-social way.
VB: What about the convoy of Travellers who moved across the country to Knock last summer and caused chaos in the towns they visited and apparently leaving a terrible mess behind them? In addition, there were reports that they demanded money to leave.
MC: Well, all I can say to that, if that is the case, you know, well obviously we condemn that quite categorically. They should be made legally accountable to the courts, fined, imprisoned, whatever the case is. But there is an underlying problem: the failure by the local authorities to provide transient sites.
VB: Have you been hurt by discrimination? MC: Oh, yes. It makes you very angry, it really pisses you off.
VB: Give me an instance.
MC: I was in a pub with my father and we were refused service. I challenged the guy, and he said he didn't have to give you a reason. I lost the cool and I'm not particularly proud of it and I engaged in a bit of a scuffle with this guy.
VB: Did you hit him?
MC: I didn't hit him, no. I actually had broken a mirror out of pure torment, pure rage. I lost the cool and was subsequently arrested. The guards took a statement. I went to court and I told the judge what happened and the judge then dismissed the case. VB: Has the condition of Travellers generally improved in the last seven years?
MC: There have been some improvements, especially arising from the task force report in 1995 and the committees that have arisen from that involving the Departments of Education, Health and Environment. They have developed different policies and strategies but I think that where we are weak is in the implementation of our policies at local level.
VB: How many Travellers are living either on the side of the road or on unofficial sites?
MC: The 1995 task force report stated that by the year 2000, there would be 3,100 new units. We find ourselves, almost six years on, that only 127 new units of accommodation have been provided for Travellers.
There actually has been an increase in the number of Travellers living unofficially on the side of the road without basic services, such as water and electricity. There are now 1,207 families, about 8,000 Travelling people, living on the side of the road and these are the figures of the Department of the Environment. One in four Travellers lives without basic facilities such as water, sanitation and electricity.
VB: What do you think of the halting sites that have been provided? MC: Many of them are monstrosities, they are appalling. Places like St Christopher's and St Mary's in Finglas and Cappagh.
VB: Have the anti-discrimination provisions of recent legislation, especially in the Equal Status Act, been of much help?
MC: Travellers won a case recently over being excluded from a Johnny McEvoy concert. That concert predated the Equal Status Act. There have been lots of other instances where Travellers have taken cases but without success and this has been because, I think, the penalty is too severe. Take, for instance, the case of pubs that refuse to serve Travellers. The only sanction that a judge has is to refuse the pub the renewal of licence and many judges just don't want to do that because the pubs may be a family business and refusing a renewal of licence may deprive people of a livelihood and put bar staff out of work. No judge is going to do that and, frankly, I don't think that is the answer. I think there should be a fine for each instance of discrimination and the matter should be dealt with in that way.
VB: Is this a very prevalent thing, that lots of pubs refuse to serve Travellers?
MC: Absolutely. I know two cases at the moment where Travellers are having difficulty getting hotels for wedding receptions . . . It's a common thing. It happens day in, day out in this country, in shops, in pubs, hotels, barbers, hairdressers, launderettes, it's a huge problem. VB: Barbers and hairdressers?
MC: Yes. You better believe it. The most outrageous example I've ever come across was two years ago in Cork in a shopping mall, I'm getting real American now. A shopping centre in Cork. There was a Santa Claus in the shopping centre and a Traveller woman wanted to bring her two children. She was run out. She wasn't allowed bring her two children in to see Santa. Now that's really pathetic. That really does piss me off and makes me very angry. It makes a lot of people angry.
VB: What about feuding between various gangs within the Traveller community, what seems to amount to all-out war on occasion? MC: No, it's not all-out war. The media would like to present it as that. There is no doubt that there is an issue there and it does give cause for concern. It's actually some dispute between individuals. VB: Do you remember the situation that went on in Tuam a number of years ago when a large part of the town was terrorised by a feud involving maybe up to 100 people?
MC: Travellers themselves are terrorised by this. They're also afraid of this.
VB: What's going on? We saw a Traveller funeral a few years ago. Gardai searched people and found almost an arsenal of weapons.
MC: Well, fair enough. There are incidents that are quite complex and they need to be dealt with. I know some guards who have actually confiscated some . . . absolutely. The guards will actually display a whole array of weapons on the six o'clock news, the nine o'clock news and I'm not convinced that is quite helpful. And what happens subsequently, no one seems to be arrested. People need to be arrested, it's as simple as that.
We in Pavee Point have just recently established a mediation service. It's looking at the areas of conflict among the Travellers themselves. We have just developed a training module which is going to be used within different training programmes in Traveller organisations and Traveller groups.
