Why should Travellers be treated differently than anybody else by the health services? Haven't they all got medical cards and aren't the hospitals as open to them as they are to the settled population?
Actually, if there is one area in which Travellers have an unanswerable case to be treated differently, it is health.
The circumstances in which Travellers live contribute to very poor health - and the effect of these circumstances is compounded by the failure of health and social services to take them into account.
If, for example, you are on a halting site with little or no running water, how are you to get a child, or yourself, to a hospital for a 9 a.m. appointment?
And what if you are living beside the town or city dump? This reporter has never forgotten a story told by a Traveller living on a halting site beside a Dublin dump of finding his small child walking around cradling a half-dead, poisoned rat. The child thought the rat was a pet.
Even getting letters of appointment or the results of a test can be a challenge. Some postmen, according to Pavee Point, won't deliver letters to individual houses or mobile homes on official halting sites.
According to Bridget Quirke of Pavee Point, such correspondence could be sent to a Travellers' organisation which would know where to get in touch with people.
One move which would make an immediate difference would be to make a national medical card available to Travellers. "The medical card is only valid in one health board area," says Ms Quirke. If you move - or are moved - to another area "you have to apply for a new one. Then you have to get a GP to take you. Some refuse to register Travellers." If a Traveller gets written refusals from three GPs, the health board will assign a doctor to the family. But some GPs won't give a refusal in writing, she says.
A medical card valid anywhere in the State would be one way around this problem.
Our information on Traveller health is poor - there hasn't been a large-scale study since 1987. Pavee Point would like to see statistics on Travellers collected by health agencies as treatment is provided. Such statistics as we have are disturbing. Infant mortality rates for Travellers are three times higher than the national rate; Travellers have more than double the national rate of still births; the rate of Sudden Infant Death is nearly twice as high among Travellers as in the settled population; Traveller men live on average 10 years less than settled men; Traveller women live on average 12 years less than settled women.
It is a grim picture. We have been promised a Travellers' Health Strategy. A draft drawn up by the National Travellers' Health Advisory Committee was sent to the Minister for Health and Children in December. Travellers, and all concerned with tackling this unacceptable situation, will be looking to Mr Martin to publish it without delay.