FIANNA FAIL has called for the appointment of a Minister of State for travellers. The party also says that when in office it will provide funding for travellers' support groups in local communities throughout the State. And it says it will "direct" RTE to broadcast programmes giving a positive view of travellers.

The pledges are included in a position paper on travellers published yesterday. "The settled community has failed to understand the travelling community," says Mr Chris Flood TD, the party's spokesman on travellers, in the introduction to the document. "These failures to understand, the travellers are not simply the result of cold indifference. They owe as much to deliberate ignorance about travellers culture and humanity and a deeply rooted hostility sometimes viciously expressed to their way, perspective, plans of life, their needs, values and rights."

The party leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, promises "the immediate reversal" of the neglect of travellers on Fianna Fail's return to government.

Among the measures promised in the document are:

. Implementation within five years of all the recommendations in the report of the Task Force on the Travelling Community;

. Appointment of a Minister of State to ensure Government Departments play their role in implementing the task force report;

. Establishment of a national cultural centre for travellers;

. A national travellers health planning committee to be established in the Department of Health;

. A traveller education service unit to be established in the Department of Education;

. A traveller job creation and training unit in the Department of Enterprise and Employment;

. A commission of inquiry into the treatment of travellers;

. A number of local projects to mediate between travellers and settled people in situations of conflict;

. Funding for local traveller support groups which would "assist the settled community to value the travellers within their midst and help dispel the mutual suspicion which often exists between the two groups at local level."

Referring to local objections to housing schemes or halting sites for travellers, the document says that "the settled community and their local representative organisations frequently claim that their objections are based on the lack of consultation with them on the traveller accommodation proposals.

"Unfortunately, with few exceptions, such organisations feel they have the right through the consultation process to veto, if they wish, the provision of traveller accommodation in their area."