REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT PAVEE POINT TRAVELLERS’ CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT PAVEE POINT TRAVELLERS’ CENTRE NORTH GREAT GEORGES STREET, DUBLIN
Firstly, I would like to thank you all for the very warm welcome which you’ve given me this morning – and I’d particularly like to thank John O’Connell for inviting me to pay this brief visit – to meet some of you - and to get an update on your work at Pavee Point. I was also delighted to meet Martin Collins again – Martin was at my inauguration last November in Dublin Castle – as one of the representatives of the various communities and groups who were there.
In March I had the privilege of visiting the parish of St. Laurence - the parish set up by the Archdiocese of Dublin – to cater for the spiritual requirements of the travelling community – and to embrace them as an ethnic group within the Catholic Church. I was there to launch the excellent video “The Light Within” – and I know that there were representatives of many groups – including Pavee Point – at that launch. St. Laurence’s – as you know - has a significant role in building healthy, respectful relationships through its solidarity with Travellers – in helping Travellers to take action against the inequalities which directly effect them – and to take their place in Irish society as members of a special and important culture, with its own language, folklore and history – and entitled to its own space and place in the Ireland of the 1990’s.
The video which I launched then - raises many of the issues that effect the travelling community - highlighting the fact that the problem of exclusion and prejudice is getting worse – where our new found prosperity seems to have hardened attitudes to those who don’t fit in with the popular model of society. The video showed clearly that plight of the travelling community contrasts sharply with the new affluent Ireland - where it’s often difficult to get a halting site for families – where infant and adult mortality rates are over twice those of the ‘settled’ community – where the general health status is much lower – and where there is an extremely low level of participation in education. The recent statistics from the Central Statistics Office – about traveller life expectancies - and about child mortality rates – are striking reminders of how much progress remains to be made in redressing the imbalances that exist between the settled and traveller community.
I know that the primary focus of your work is in addressing these problems in the health, cultural and other programmes that you run at Pavee Point. Your ultimate goal is the inclusion of the traveller community in Irish society as a whole. You know yourselves how much work is involved in that process – and how at times it can appear that you are going backwards rather than making progress. Unfortunately, many people see the ‘solution’ to the treatment of the travelling community in the assimilation of Travellers into their concept of society – while some prefer to opt for the domination method of exclusion – assigning them the status of inferior beings.
For all of us on this island at this time – where we are trying to reach a new beginning – a new set of relationships that recognise the diversity of culture and tradition – and even celebrates it as an enriching quality of our lives – it is timely too that the culture and heritage of the traveller community is more universally understood and recognised as distinct. It is a major task – and one that will require overcoming many obstacles and hurdles.
For my part – I have said that my mission as President is to build bridges between the cultures and traditions on this island. What you are doing at Pavee Point is part of that process of building bridges and links – in seeking the inclusion of the traveller community in a society that promotes and celebrates diversity rather than suppresses it - a generous, sharing Ireland that encompasses many traditions and cultures - that creates a space for all of its people - where the richness of diversity is not just a virtue, but a profound necessity.
My visit to you today is to give recognition to the important and significant work that you are doing through your programmes – and to affirm you in your continuing efforts to address the material welfare of the travelling community. I commend you on the range of your programmes – and I wish you well with your plans to widen the scope of your efforts in the future.
ENDS