MARIA DUNLEAVY,
Sir, - When I was 14 years of age, I finished school one day only to find that my bicycle had a punctured tyre. I telephoned my father, asking if he could give me a lift in his car. He thought it would be good discipline for me to walk the five miles home instead.
Half-way through my journey, I stopped to rest beside an illegal halting site near Foxrock Church. It was cold and getting dark, my bicycle was rickety, my knee-length stockings kept falling down, and tears of self-pity were welling in my eyes.
A little girl came running out of one of the caravans. She asked me why I was sitting on the fence, rather than going home. "I have no home," I replied, rather dramatically. She immediately responded: "Well, why don't you come and live with us?"
This demonstration of congeniality and kindness was one of my earliest impressions of the travelling community, and it has always stayed with me, even when I have witnessed "despoliated sites where Travellers have illegally halted" of the type described by Kevin Myers in his Irishman's Diary of January 8th.
I work with another minority group - people with a learning disability. Like travelling people,they suffer from discrimination and prejudice. I have heard a medical consultant refer to my clients as "backward sub-normals".
Inappropriate labels such as these indicate negative attitudes arising from ignorance and lack of awareness. Bigotry is enhanced when negative issues relating to minority groups are focused upon in the media.
An extreme example of this was Hitler's campaign of anti-Semitism. Yes, Hitler broadcast exaggerated lies, but is it not a fact that the travelling community have also at times been falsely accused of theft and acts of aggression. And their fundamental rights, such as protection from domestic violence and abuses such as incest, have often been ignored.
Mr Myers admits that he doesn't have a clue how to resolve the conflicts between the travellers and the "settled community". But I am certain of this. As long as the issue is dominated by negative attitudes, an exclusive society and a general lack of understanding amplified by the media, we continue to hurtle headlong towards social disaster. - Yours, etc.,
MARIA DUNLEAVY,
The Paddock,
Westport,
Co Mayo.