Tag Archives: Pavee Point

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A still from a video of a Traveller horse and wagon being stopped by gardaí in Dublin city centre yesterday during the Reclaim 1916 parade.

Pavee Point writes:

Here is a video from the Reclaim 1916 parade on [yesterday]. The experience was marred by gardaí telling us, at the last minute, that we couldn’t bring the horse and wagon up O’Connell Street. We believe that this was for genuine health and safety reasons. However, we feel that the situation wasn’t handled as it should have been.

It resulted in Pavee Point having to pull to one side and wait until the end of the parade to be able to bring the horse and wagon up O’Connell Street. Although we were stopped only a few hundred metres from the end of the parade, we felt it was important to finish the parade with the horse and wagon – important symbols of Traveller culture.

And we wanted to be able to make our statement walking past the Daniel O’Connell statue and arriving at the GPO – given the centenary anniversary that was in it. We’re glad to report that we did make it onto O’Connell Street to take our rightful place – and we got great crowd support. After all it was the people’s parade.

Watch the video here

Previously: Worth The Licence Fee

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This afternoon.

Pavee Point Traveller & Roma Centre

North Great Charles Street, Dublin
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President Higgins with Sabina Higgins (right) and Molly Connors, before delivering a speech to mark Pavee Point’s 30th anniversary that urged greater understanding of traveller and Roma communites and touched on the recent tragedy in Carrickmines. More to follow.

Update:

From President Higgins’ speech:

“The campaigns for equality and non-discrimination, for recognition of the status of Travellers as an ethnic minority, and for access to essential services, which Pavee Point and others have led since then have been grounded in a deep and profound understanding of the position of Travellers within the framework of human rights and the Irish State’s obligations to respect, protect and promote those rights.

In the past I have been part of the debate on ethnic status. I recall Dr. Joshua Castellino and I rejecting what we felt was a very inadequate research basis for denying ethnic status.

Within the framework of human rights, there has been progress over the intervening years and it is important that is recognised.

Back when Pavee Point was formed, Traveller children were still segregated in Traveller schools and many Traveller children left education without completing primary school and were often illiterate. The very idea that these children could attend third level colleges was often beyond their own comprehension.

Today overt segregation in the classroom and beyond have ceased, more Traveller children are attending second level schools and young Travellers are achieving high levels of educational attainment, and increased numbers are progressing through third level education each year, but we are far from the fullest understanding of the heritage, culture and aspirations of Travellers as a people that is required. My own experiences of the institutional treatment of Travellers at local authority level were far from satisfactory.

It has often made Sabina and I not just sad, but angry at the treatment which Traveller families who had become our friends had to endure, including having to live in unsafe and even hazardous conditions.”

Full speech here

Pic Hans Zomer