Sir, - I am a 16-year-old traveller girl attending a secondary school in Dublin. I read your article about the protest to stop a travelling family moving into an area in Co. Wexford (April 27th) and I am both annoyed and saddened that Irish travellers are still being treated as unfairly and as cruelly as years ago.
I go to a school where there are only four travellers and I am the only traveller in my class. I have been there for the last two years and I am doing my Junior Cert in June. Nobody in the school has ever treated me unfairly and I have made great friends who show me respect.
My life in Dublin may sound easy but I get discriminated against because of who I am. I have great pity for this woman in Wexford. She was given no chance to start living among settled people and I am disgusted to think she was put out because she was a traveller.
The residents who held the protest said it was not an anti-traveller protest. If this was so why do they not want this one traveller woman in their area. Their only excuse was that she was an outsider. I would like to say I like settled people, they are friendly but they are all different. We are all different too, so please don't treat us all as the same. Some of us are trying to make a future for ourselves. I know it may be hard at times but please try and treat us with respect. Please take another look around before tarring us travellers with the same brush. - Yours, etc. Mary McDonnell,
Finglas, Dublin 11.