The ISPCC deserves two cheers for its new Leanbh project, aimed at tackling the plight of children begging on the streets. It would have deserved three cheers had it done more to involve the travelling community in the running and implementation of the project.
The sight of children begging on O'Connell Bridge, the Ha'penny Bridge and in other parts of Dublin has, for a long time, been one of the more shameful aspects of life in our capital city. This is not to say that child begging is confined to Dublin - but it is in Dublin that the practice is most visible and most prevalent.
The public can only wonder why it is allowed to continue. It is, of course, a complex issue. It is during the afternoon that traveller children are most likely to be found begging, as a report by the ISPCC shows. In the evening and into the early hours of the next morning, it is homeless children, or children who are out of home for a short period, who beg.
Among travellers, sending children to beg on the street is frowned upon as much as it is frowned upon by the settled community. There are about 5,000 travellers in Dublin but only 20 families are estimated, by the Pavee Point Travellers' Centre, to be involved in street begging by children.
Why do they send their children to beg? Pavee Point suggests that there is a variety of reasons. Some beg because their parents need money for drink, some because the family may be in the grip of moneylenders, some because a crisis has left the family short of money for essentials; others see begging as a business.
Many of these factors also apply, however, to travellers who do not send their children to beg in the streets. That a small minority defy the disapproval of their own community suggests that persuading them to give up street begging may be a difficult task. This, surely, is a task which can only succeed with the involvement, at every level, of members of the travelling community. Yet the ISPCC met Pavee Point only on the day before the project was launched. There is no evidence that the Leanbh project will actively seek out travellers to train them as volunteers or that it will seek to include traveller representatives in the running of the project.
Yet traveller women are implementing a primary health-care project on behalf of the Eastern Health Board, travellers are doing community work and Pavee Point is run by travellers and settled people together. There is, therefore, no reason why the Leanbh project cannot find travellers to help in its running and implementation.
There is another aspect of the street begging story which we must not forget. Is it that one of the many reasons for our upset at street begging is that we see it happening in front of our eyes? Yet many traveller families live in unsanitary conditions on temporary sites and these conditions contribute to the relatively early death of many travellers.
But, by and large, we don't see that. We see the child sitting on the side of the street, begging. We don't see the deprivation that this child will return to. It is a classic case of `out of sight, out of mind'.