"From a travellers' perspective, they'd say I am a Traveller, that I was born to a Traveller family so I am one."
There is ambivalence, however, and as far as Patrick McCann (41) can see things, given the life he has led since being fostered to a "settled" family in England at 18 months, his Traveller mother and siblings will never really accept him.
"There's an element of `we don't know what to make of him'," he says. "A sense of `We accept he's different but we don't accept him'. "
Patrick was born to an Irish Traveller couple, Winnie and Michael McCann, in Manchester in 1958. The 17-year gap between the couple made for an unhappy union, says Patrick. There were eight children in a bedsit in the chronically disadvantaged area of Mosside. Disharmony in the marriage eventually led to the children being taken into care.
He was adopted by a Cheshire couple, the Whitakers, who did not hide that he had been adopted and was born to Travellers.
"It was never in a negative way - more romantic - that I had come from the Gypsies with their caravans and their spotted scarves. At school it was fine, just a bit embarrassing that my surname was different to my parents. By the age of 10, I was pretty much assimilated into the family and didn't feel I was Traveller at all."
At this time he heard nothing from his Traveller family. He got O and A Level exam results at school and attended Manchester Polytechnic.
It was the beginning of punk and Patrick threw himself into the scene with gusto.
"I got to London when I was 17 and had a band with two friends, Sparky and Fred, called the Mongonic Mutanoids. We weren't really working - just living day to day. We got dole, had wealthy girlfriends, took lots of drugs. It was hedonistic, nihilistic."
Sitting today in the beautiful top-floor apartment he shares with his wife, Catherine, and daughter, Helen (16), in Cork city, his life seems a world away from the traditional picture of the Traveller halting site.
However, after 2 1/2 years and at the height of the hedonism, Patrick did get back in contact with his Traveller family. "I was literally spaced out. I used the Traveller link really as an escape valve. I had gone through so much crap with my adoptive parents that I wanted a whole new place."
Without announcing himself, he arrived at the halting site on which he knew his mother lived in Finglas, Dublin. She was in Co Cork for the summer, living under canvas and selling items door-to-door.
"I think they saw me as some sort of mad man. After all, who wouldn't if someone wearing ripped Dr Marten boots, oilsplashed jeans, a velvet hat with feathers, black eye make-up and studs in their nose turned up claiming to be their son? But we got on well. They told me great stories about all the old ways."
After six weeks he left, returned to London and went to Greece for three years. He went back to London and got "sucked back" into drugs. However, he had been thinking a lot about the six weeks in Co Cork and quickly made up his mind to move to Ireland "for good".
He was to spend the next five years living on the halting site in Finglas. "I was whacked. I just wanted to rest. Walking into the site, it was like into a haven. I just chatted and hung around at first, not eating much, just resting." Though he became involved in Traveller concerns, set up a site committee, had dealings with social workers and the local authorities on Travellers' interests, he says he "kept [his] distance".
His mother felt he had not psychologically survived leaving the Traveller family, that he had "gone off the rails".
He felt the way the Travelling community had treated his mother, "with their own kind of racism and sexism" after she lost her children, was representative of a culture in which he did not want to be fully immersed.
During the five years, the site took on a different aura from his initial description as a "haven".
"Living there showed me that my life had not been as bleak as I had thought. I had not had such a raw deal when put in the context of their lives.
"There was an overall depression in the air. A sense of going nowhere, of entrapment almost. The people talked a lot about `lonesomeness' and the site itself looked like a forlorn, open prison. It was as if they had been given their freedom but had nowhere to go."
Referring again to the sense of "lonesomeness", he agrees that this is probably an important factor in the emphasis Travellers place on the extended family.
Patrick left Finglas, with no ill-feeling, in 1985.
He lived in Dublin for a year, during which he met Catherine. They moved to north Co Cork, where they ran a farm and now live in Cork city.
He says he also "wanted to put a face on the enemy".
"I had heard so much about anti-Traveller feeling. I used to open conversations in pubs about Travellers and listen to the comments and, overall, individuals generally didn't seem to have problems with them. I was surprised at the lack of discrimination."
However, he continues: "In their hearts they may have felt something else and, of course, mob rule can speak for itself. The conflict [between Travellers and settled] is deep, complex and devious. I have met racists who don't even know they are racists."
It is now 12 years since he has had real contact with his Traveller family. "I did ring them a few times, asked them to come and see my life. I have written once or twice, but I have not heard from them."
He does not deny his Traveller roots and is writing a book on his experiences. He also attends Irish Traveller Movement conferences as part of his work with disadvantaged children.
Asked whether he is glad he did not grow up in the Traveller culture, he is hesitant.
"It's an impossible question, but I am as glad as I am glad that I was not born into the kind of poverty I see in Gurranabraher [area in Cork]. I'm glad I've had a lifestyle that was more privileged in the sense that I have been able to develop a wider perspective on human life than I would have otherwise. I'm glad, let's say, I'm not part of just one tribe."
Series concluded; tomorrow Kitty Holland examines what has been done in recent years to improve the lot of Travellers - and what has not been done.