Sir, - In recent weeks your paper carried a negative piece about Travellers (Kevin Myers, An Irishman's Diary, July 30th) and a letter from Mary Gardiner (August 30th). As a Traveller and a member of the Irish Association of Minority Ethnic Women, I would like to invite Mr Myers and Ms Gardiner to live for a week in a Traveller site so that they can experience for themselves what it means to live without running water, toilets, or refuse collection.
Ms Gardiner argues that Travellers cause "filth, dirt and litter" which they leave to local authorities to clean up. I would challenge her to keep a site clean with no bin collections, no running water and no toilets, and with settled people dumping their own rubbish in skips on Travellers' sites. Many of these sites are a disgrace; they are worse than many of the worst areas of the Third World. And it is not as if settled people are so clean themselves; as soon as the bin-men go on strike, Irish streets become piles of litter.
Mr Myers and Ms Gardiner say that Travellers refuse to work even now when there is such a labour shortage. I would like them to tell me who will give Travellers a job, when they are followed by security people even as they go innocently into shops.
Finally, Ms Gardiner criticises Traveller parents for making their children beg, subjecting them to "emotional, physical slavery". Yes, there is a minority of Traveller children who beg, usually because of severe hardship at home, but anyone passing along any citycentre street knows that the majority of beggars are settled people, mostly adults.
It does not befit The Irish Times to allow space for articles and letters such as Mr Myers's and Ms Gardiner's, which contribute to anti-Traveller racism and make the work of Traveller organisations much harder. - Yours, etc.,
Nancy Collins, Pavee Point, North Great Charles Street, Dublin 1.