The issue of relations between Travellers and the rest of society is not one which arouses much enthusiasm.
It does, however, arouse a great deal of passion, often involving intemperate language and usually generating more heat than light. Very many people have views but few seem to have solutions that commend themselves to either side.
The strained relations between Travellers and people living in suburban areas of the State's main population centres has been highlighted this week by a series of reports in this newspaper by Kathy Sheridan. What emerges from the views expressed by both sides is that this is not a black and white issue: right is not on one side alone.
The plight of Travellers is impossible to avoid. As Irish society has become both more wealthy and urbanised in recent decades, some traditional Traveller means of earning a living have evaporated. Begging has become more prevalent. While some Traveller families display visable, often ostentatious, signs of wealth - expensive vehicles, large homes and caravans - others are equally clearly living in degrees of poverty the rest of us would find intolerable. Manifestations of such poverty abound: Traveller children are less likely to obtain a sound basic education and attend secondary school than settled children; mortality rates are higher and life expectancy lower. These things should not be but it must also be said that many Travellers chose to live lives which the rest of society does not recognise as being in their own best interest - if those interests are defined as longevity of life and material comfort.
Settled people, meanwhile, find it intolerable that some Traveller people seem to be beyond the law. The controversy over what happened at the Dodder River in Dublin is the most recent case in point. It cannot be right that a group of people - any group of people - move into a public space with impunity and turn it into an open refuse tip. Settled people have a legitimate concern when, having made the single largest investment of their lives buying a home, they find their area invaded and destroyed, with the authorities apparently unable, or unwilling, either to stop what is going on or resolve matters with dispatch.
A hugh emphasis has been placed in recent years on Traveller rights. That work is correct and must continue. But both sides also have responsibilities. The settled community and its agents in authority must negotiate co-existance, and adopt a more pragmatic approach to halting sites and waste removal. Failure to remove refuse because it is dumped illegally merely ensures that more waste is dumped, and the mess to be cleared eventually is all the larger.
And Travellers and their representatives would help their own cause were they to proselytize that some aspects of their behaviour are unacceptable to wider society and serve only to harden existing bitter attitudes.