Travellers and immigrants face discrimination

Ireland discriminates massively against the Traveller community, according to a report on equality in the workplace.

And even though immigration is relatively new to the country, there are signs that minorities from other countries also face discrimination, according to the study.

The report, by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, says discrimination and racism are rife across Europe and are preventing people from getting jobs and progressing in them once they have found work.

The annual report, released in Brussels yesterday, was particularly scathing of Ireland’s treatment of Travellers.

With about 30,000 members they are the country’s largest minority. Around 90% are unemployed, despite an average unemployment rate of 4.2%.

The report states this can be partly attributed to the decline of traditional work such as scrap metal recycling, horse-trading and market trading.

“Travellers, however, have not found easy access to the general labour market despite the economic boom. There is strong evidence of Travellers being marginalised from the mainstream workplace,” the report states.

It says Travellers do not have enough education or training opportunities and do not have access to the kinds of enterprise supports generally available to Irish people.

Travellers are afraid to take up full-time work often because they are afraid of losing their medical cards and other benefits, the report says.

While several EU countries have longer experience in hiring workers from other countries, it is a new phenomenon in Ireland. Because of skill and labour shortages Irish businesses only began to recruit outside the EU in the past three or four years.

In 1999 there were 6,000 work permits issued, this rose to 18,000 in 2000 and to 36,000 in 2001.

But despite the relatively small percentage of foreign workers in the country, almost a quarter of cases taken to the equality tribunal and the Labour Court were based on racial discrimination.

The report says that because equality legislation is relatively recent, there have been very few cases taken under the race and Traveller community provisions.

“However, there are indications that this is beginning to change,” the report warns.

The report also cites problems with the current immigration procedure and points out that border guards can refuse entry to people even when they have valid visas.

Under the Irish system, a visa only entitles the holder to present him or herself at the border to seek leave to enter the country. “The border guards have detained and sent back people with valid work permits and visas on the grounds that their employment offer no longer existed or that they had insufficient funds to support themselves,” the report said.