A social portrait of Travellers in Ireland

Abstract

The Institute's research is funded from a variety of sources including: an annual grant-in-aid from the Irish government; competitive research grants (both Irish and international); support for agreed programmes from government departments/agencies and commissioned research projects from public sector bodies. Sponsorship of the Institute's activities by Irish business and membership subscriptions provide a minor source of additional income. The Authors AcknowledgementsThis research was completed as part of a programme of research on Equality funded by the Department of Justice and Equality (DJE). We would like to express our thanks to the members of the steering group for the study, particularly Deaglán O'Broin of the DJE and Ronnie Fay of Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre. We also thank our ESRI colleagues Emer Smyth and Alan Barrett, who provided valuable comments. We are grateful to the Central Statistics Office for making available the micro-census data files for 2006 and 2011 and to the research team of the All Ireland Traveller Health Study, whose data we also use here. We also thank the three anonymous peer reviewers. Neither the DJE, the ESRI nor the CSO is responsible for the content of the report, which is the independent work of the authors. These Acts prohibit discrimination in the provision of goods and services (including accommodation and education), wither in the public or private sector, on any of the nine 'equality' grounds (see Employment Equality Acts, above). A further ground -being in receipt of housing assistance payment -also applies to the provision of accommodation. This report has been accepted for publication by the List of Tables Labour market participationThis involves being in employment (or self-employment) or being available for and actively seeking employment. Multivariate analysisA statistical analysis methodology used when we want to look at the impact of one factor (such as age) on another (such as health problems), after taking account of other differences (such as level of education, gender and so on).Odds ratio This is an indicator of how much more or less likely an outcome is for one group than another. An odds ratio greater than one indicates a greater likelihood, while an odds ratio less than one indicates a lower likelihood. For instance, if the odds ratio for poor health is 1.5 for Travellers compared to Non-Travellers, then Travellers have 50% higher odds of being in poor health. Overall and adjusted riskOverall risk is the actual rate of an outcome in the population (e.g. 12 per cent of Travellers have poor health compared to 9 per cent of non-Travellers). The adjusted risk is the risk we would observe if the groups were similar in respect of other characteristics taken into account in the statistical model (e.g. gender, age group, marital status, education, region, housing). For instance, the adjusted risk of poor health for married Traveller men would be 22 per cent compared to 12 per cent for non-Traveller married men. Traveller-specific accommodationThis...

Who experiences discrimination in Ireland? Evidence from the QNHS Equality Modules

“…Nonetheless, the patterns found are broadly consistent with previous findings both in Ireland and internationally. For example, the discrimination experienced by Irish Travellers is consistent with that reported in the All Ireland Traveller Health Survey (AITHS), and with the very low employment rates among this group (Watson et al, 2017). The discrimination reported by those with a disability is consistent with international field experiments (such as Rich et al, 2014, on recruitment) and their low employment rates (Watson et al, 2013).…”

“…This suggest that the jobs white non-Irish do, in terms of sector and occupation, offer part of the explanation as to why they might experience workplace discrimination: once we account for this difference, their experiences is not different from white Irish. This is consistent with very low employment rates of Travellers found in Watson et al (2017), which of course in itself could be an outcome of discrimination in education and in seeking work.…”

“…Such initiatives would also be beneficial across other contexts and groups or grounds (for example, minority ethnic groups, those with disabilities). The very high levels of discrimination experienced by Travellers is not surprising and consistent with findings on education, health and employment (Watson et al, 2017), and the findings are important. As Travellers comprise a small group, the number of cases limited what we could present in this report.…”

“…Given the very low rate of employment among the Traveller population (Watson et al, 2017), these results suggest that discrimination may play a role in accounting for these differences, along with low levels of education and other factors.…”

“…In Ireland, a body of evidence of inequalities has been established on a range of grounds (gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, disability and membership of the Traveller community) using statistical analysis of outcomes (Watson et al, 2013;McGinnity et al, 2014;Russell et al, 2014;Watson et al, 2017;Barrett et al, 2017). McGinnity et al (2014), in an analysis of labour market and poverty outcomes before (2007) and after recession (2012), found that equality groups were differentially affected and the overall impact of austerity and recession was complex.…”