Anti-discrimination laws are now in place, but the battle for equality for Travellers is far from over.
Many are placing great store by the Equal Status Act, which outlaws discrimination in the marketplace. It means, for example, that a Traveller refused a wedding reception booking by a hotelier can bring a complaint to an equality enforcement body and, ultimately, to the courts.
The Equal Status Act, 2000, outlaws discrimination in the provision of goods and services on grounds including gender, religion, age, sexual orientation, race and membership of the Traveller community.
Forty cases have been lodged with the Office of the Director of Equality Investigations since the law took effect last October. All but six involve Travellers. The first decisions in these cases are likely to be announced within a couple of weeks. The director can order compensation to be paid to a complainant and also direct the provider of the goods or services to take a course of action.
Anecdotally, some Travellers say just citing the legislation to publicans has allowed them access to pubs where they were previously denied entry. One man says a pub landlord poked fun at him when he told him he could no longer be denied service under the new law just because he was a Traveller.
Travellers' groups have complaints about the legislation's shortcomings, including the fact that it requires literacy, because anyone claiming discrimination has to put their case in writing.
They are also worried that one of the grounds under which service-providers are permitted to refuse a service could give an "out" to publicans intent on barring Travellers. They are, however, reserving judgment until they see how effective the law is in operation.
Irish Travellers are not related to the gypsies and Roma of other parts of Europe, who also have nomadic traditions, but they have something in common with all these groups. They are marginalised and disadvantaged and face rejection and social exclusion.
At a European conference against racism last October, Travellers were pleased to be named as a specific group facing racism, along with Roma and gypsies, in a political declaration signed by 41 countries.
Travellers in Ireland have won the battle to be recognised as an ethnic group on the basis that they were born into a group which shares a common ancestry, culture, history, tradition and sense of belonging and has specific political and economic interests.
In Britain last year a court recognised that Irish Travellers constituted an ethnic group enjoying the protection of the Race Relations Act there.
Traveller groups argue that recognition as an ethnic group allows them to better inform policy and entitles them to have their identity and way of life preserved and resourced. The old view of them as just a subculture of society's marginalised bolstered the State's assimilationist approach, which is now discredited.
In the 1980s the term "itinerant" was replaced by Traveller, in recognition of their distinct identity.