The Director of the Equality Authority has criticised the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, for saying that Travellers were not a distinct ethnic group.
Mr Niall Crowley described as "disappointing" a written Dáil reply given by the Minister on Wednesday.
In the reply the Minister said: "Travellers do not constitute a distinct group from the population as a whole in terms of race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin." But Mr Crowley said yesterday that in all the Equality Authority's work, "we have acknowledged the ethnicity of the Travellers.
"It is an important recognition, not just in terms of locating them in a human rights framework, but in terms of recognition of social diversity itself and of their right to be different. That is the ultimate goal of equality legislation."
He pointed out that Travellers were recognised as a distinct racial group in a 1997 Race Relations Order in the North. "They are identified as having a shared history, culture and nomadism, which are ethnic identifiers," said Mr Crowley. "And we have the Belfast Agreement which speaks about an equivalence of rights [between the North and the Republic]."
The Equality Authority is a statutory body established by the Department of Justice in 1999. Various Traveller organisations have reacted angrily to the Minister's comments. Ms Grainne O'Toole, acting co-ordinator of the Irish Traveller Movement, described them as "really retrograde and deeply worrying".
"To say Travellers are not a distinct ethnic minority denigrates Travellers because it implies that their difference is a social phenomenon, that they are marginalised and disadvantaged because they have dropped out in some way, when we would say they are marginalised because of their ethnicity," Ms O'Toole said.
