The Community Foundation for Ireland are very pleased to announce that a grant of €7,500 which went to Minceirs Whiden, Ireland’s only all Traveller Forum has been put towards a national project on mobilising the Irish traveller vote and increasing political visibility and participation among members of the Travelling community.
Community in Crises
We believed in funding this project to support to the Travelling community, who compared to the general population have much higher rates of mental health issues. Kathleen Turner of Minceirs Whiden cites the lack of progress made in reducing the high rates of depression, addiction and suicide among travellers as a lack of political will. Suicide rates among travellers are at least six times higher than wider society. If outcomes are to improve for the traveller population it must come from political representatives who have the power to implement decisions that will help them move beyond these crises. And for this to be achieved, there must be an increase in the amount of travellers voting and taking part in the political process.
Engaging with a political system that’s failed them
One of the biggest challenges facing this project was attempting to engage with a community of people who have very little trust or knowledge of the Irish political system which they feel has failed and isolated them. Turner commented “Politicians and political parties have largely ignored the issues that the Traveller community has to deal with. Much of this is sadly due to fears of losing votes. By encouraging Travellers to vote and contest elections, we hope this will encourage Politicians to stand up for our community.”
To overcome this, Minceirs Whiden held the first Irish Traveller Political Participation Conference in Athlone. The event included training on voter registration and vote casting. They also developed a toolkit titled “Minceirs Whiden Mobilising Irish Traveller Political Participation Before, During and After Elections” for Traveller organisations and activists. Over 500 of these were printed and distributed. Short and effective instruction videos were created from the conference which explain the importance of Travellers using their vote.
Hope for the future
The conference was also used as an opportunity to launch the campaigns of three members of the community who were contesting the local elections in May of this year. Martin Ward in Tuam, Catherine Coffey O’Brien in Cork and Julie O’Reilly in Longford. In total five members of the Travelling community contested elections simultaneously which is unprecedented in Ireland. Although none were elected, there was much encouragement taken by the increased interest and engagement of the community and admiration for the candidates who put themselves forward. Increased number of travellers registered to vote and voted in the 2019 Local Elections. Minceirs Whiden plan on building upon this and are confident we’ll see increased numbers of Travellers taking part in future elections.