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The Government has again been urged to reconsider its proposal to axe
over half of the number of posts for resource teachers for Traveller
children.
The call was made by Fr Derek Farrell, parish priest of the Parish of
Travelling People and follows concerns expressed by the Ombudsman for
Children in an RTÉ radio interview on Wednesday morning.
Fr Farrell
first highlighted the matter over two months ago on behalf of his parish
and members of the Traveller community.
On Wednesday he said there had been no positive response to the pleas
for a reversal to, or postponement of, the cut in resource posts.
He
said he hoped the RTÉ Morning Ireland interview with Ombudsman,
Emily Logan, who spoke out on behalf of Traveller children, would help
lead to a reversal of this decision.
In a statement, Fr Farrell said that the Ombudsman recognised that
the cuts would, in effect, mean Traveller children would be more
disadvantaged educationally than before.
Of the 1,200 resource posts
that are due to be cut by the end of this month, almost 800 are in
Traveller Education at primary and post-primary level.
The Department of Education's contribution to the National Recovery
Plan last November - “Withdrawal of Resource Teachers for Travellers
posts at primary level and of equivalent teaching hours for Travellers
at post-primary level” - outlined the possible shedding of jobs in this
sector.
“As we said last March, this is clearly an issue of fairness and
justice,” Fr Farrell said, and added, “How is it possible that two
thirds of the cutbacks in the area of Resource and Visiting Teachers are
targeted at Traveller children? These include many children who have
benefited enormously from resource teaching to date, but who are at
serious risk of dropping back or dropping out of education if that extra
help is pulled from them.”
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland programme on Wednesday
morning, Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan highlighted the cuts in
resource teachers as an example of what she called a “poor choice in
education.”
She described the number of teachers cut in Traveller education (773
out of 1,200) as disproportionate and called for a child impact
analysis.
The Parish of the Travelling People, established in the Archdiocese
of Dublin, is one of only two parishes in Europe with specific pastoral
responsibility of its kind.
The parish has been working with local
teachers, along with and the Crosscare Traveller Inclusion Programme, to
highlight the issue of the cuts in Resource and Visiting Teachers for
Travellers.
Meanwhile, the Irish Chaplaincy in Britain has highlighted concerns
over the lower life expectancy of Irish Travellers compared to those of
the general population, uncovered during a recent visit to the UK’s
largest settlement of Irish Travellers.
At Dale Farm in Essex, where Travellers are threatened with eviction,
project workers from the Irish Chaplaincy uncovered possible reasons
for lower life expectancy among Irish Travellers.
Grandmother Pearl McCarthy, who lives at Dale Farm, told Irish
Chaplaincy staff, “A big advantage of settling in one place is that you
can register with a GP, and then every time you go to the doctors you
are dealing with someone who has an insight into your medical history
and can diagnose problems earlier."
She added, "Whereas if you are moving from roadside to roadside then
you can't go to the same GP all the time, instead you have to visit A
& E, which is fine but they don’t have your medical history and
therefore can't diagnose problems in time.”
“My own husband died at 45, just dropped dead, and I always wonder if he had an undiagnosed problem,” she explained.
Pearl and her family are likely to be evicted from their land at Dale
Farm in the coming months, a situation which will impact on the life
expectancy and literacy rates of more than 300 people in the community.
Existing research on Traveller life expectancy rates shows that 50
per cent of Irish Travellers die before their 39th birthday while 70 per
cent of Irish Travellers die before the age of 59 years.
The life
expectancy of a Traveller male born in 2008 is 16 years less than the UK
average while the life expectancy of a Traveller female born in 2008 is
11.8 years less than the UK average.
Director of the Irish Chaplaincy in Britain Philomena Cullen said in
response to the new research findings, “The statistics we have
highlighted, and the stories of people like Pearl McCarthy, highlight
the urgent need which travellers have, needs which are not always
addressed; they are some of the most vulnerable of Irish emigrants”