Travellers should be involved in the decision-making processes which affect them and gardai and media should co-operate in breaking down barriers, the Forum heard. Mr Martin Collins of the Pavee Point Travellers' Centre said they were also trying to set up a mediation service in cases concerning disputes over halting sites.
"There is the not-in-my-backyard syndrome and many of these cases end up in court. It is time consuming and expensive. We are endeavouring to try to establish a mediation service to intervene in such situations," Mr Collins said.
The group would recommend and support community policing. It had the potential to contribute to building confidence and breaking down the barriers that existed.
The gardaI had an impact on how crime was reported in the media. Great care needed to be taken that whole communities, such as the traveller community did not end up being stigmatised as criminals. Garda authorities should direct its members to desist from supplying information to the media in a way that was likely to stigmatise a whole community, Mr Collins said.
He said Ireland was the only country in the EU which did not protect ethnic groups through legislation. The Incitement to Hatred Act had never been enforced successfully.
Ms Rosaleen McDonagh, of the National Traveller Women's Forum, said domestic violence against women did happen in the travelling community, but it happened in the settled community as well. Travelling women were seen as passive and submissive but that was wrong: they were strong.
Also making a submission was the Gay HIV Strategies Group, whose project director, Mr Kieran Rose, said: "Prejudice-based violence against gay men and lesbians is a major but hidden problem. There are a range of practical measures which could be taken by the statutory sector which would tackle this aspect of crime in a serious way."
According to a Combat Poverty Agency study in 1995, two-fifths of 159 gay people questioned had been threatened with violence; a quarter had been punched, beaten kicked or hit. Mr Rose said his group would propose that a garda team with special responsibility for combating violence against gay people should be set up on an experimental basis.