Mum with 7 children being offered a home

[gonzo76]

Parents have such an influence on children. As long as traveller parents are just sitting on their arses all day, riding their horses through busy city streets, breaking into houses, abusing animals and so on, then their children are going to do the same. You have got to shop off the the head of the snake to kill it. If you took the traveller kids off their traveller parents and raised them in normal homes, the vast majority of them would turn into decent law abiding citizens. They are taught to be scumbags.

Their culture is self sustaining. The traveller children do what their parents teach them and those children then in turn teach their own children. They have no other choice to go on welfare and have seven kids because that is the only way they can make money. Their culture has to change.

There is no hope for traveller kids and i feel sorry for them in ways. Once you are labelled a traveller, its like being labelled a paedophile. Nobody will hire them, nobody wants to be near them. As long as traveller kids have traveller parents, the status quo will remain unchanged.

I will simply point you to the trump dynasty to reflect that what you are saying is common everywhere. Scumbag father, Scumbag kids.

And equally, not all travelers are like you say, and not everyone labels them and disadvantages them as you have indicated.

Many are, and many do, I will accept that of course. But when looking at a social problem you cannot deal in absolutes.

It is the government's responsibility to apply standards of education equally, and to provide the systems that allow all kids equally the same chances. Of course these kids will have it harder and the government fails miserably to do this job.

But again rather than complaining about human nature, if you really cared about it, you'd lobby the government to enact better programs so your hard earned tax money is spent efficiently and wisely so that over time these people can be a net contributer rather than a net loss.

Here again I'm talking policy, not specific cases. Each case needs to be examined on its own merits and each person must take their own individual responsibility. But travelers as a group are disadvantaged, and so it is harder for them. This woman, when she was 15, because of her background, ended up on a path that many could see ending here. Why not instead try to make it so she doesn't end up on that path?

[The Libertarian]

I live in a council area where there are quite a lot of travelers. The reality is for a lot of such families, getting married early often to your first cousin and having as many children as possible is the name of the game! It's open to all Irish Citizens, but one section of our society does it, have 10 children and your family will be on the equivalent on a single person earning close to €100K gross per year, in state benefits and that's not including medical cards all round and social housing!
Also if one of your children is diagnosed with ADHD by a beardy psychologist because he has been going around in a gang smashing his neighbours windows in on top of them - Yahoo! It means free electricity, free TV license and free companion travel for Momma and Pappa and no heat from the dole because you are now carers!
If the money was being pumped into the kids welfare, it would be different but when you see as I have seen children as young as 18 months running across roads by themselves barefoot, it's obvious they are being bred purely for mickey money or even in cases the hope of a massive compensation payout when they are involved in a highly predictable accident!
In other areas of the world where inbreeding is common, the folks who engage in it at lower social levels, aren't cherished like some sort of royalty!

[The Libertarian]

I would say most Irish People have had a negative interaction with a traveler or a group of them at some stage, I have and I have not had negative encounters with Muslims, people of African Ethnicity or Oriental folk in Ireland, I have met a few Plastic Paddy Assholes from England and few gobshytes who happen to be Eastern European alright!

[gonzo76]

I would say most Irish People have had a negative interaction with a traveler or a group of them at some stage, I have and I have not had negative encounters with Muslims, people of African Ethnicity or Oriental folk in Ireland, I have met a few Plastic Paddy Assholes from England and few gobshytes who happen to be Eastern European alright!

I could tell you stories about my experiences with travelers also. But I refuse to deal in absolutes. It's too easy to shrug shoulders and say that's the way it is. Change things, educate, invest in the people. If as a country we don't focus on these issues then they won't change. I'm not saying anything you'd said is incorrect, just my focus is on how to fix it rather than complaining about people for human nature. It's easy to be lazy and take a handout so some elements will take that road.

And what I mean is, end the easy handouts. If you're able bodied, earn your dole, etc.

But it's late and if I stay posting on a forum all night I'll lose my job and be looking for a handout too!

[The Libertarian]

I could tell you stories about my experiences with travelers also. But I refuse to deal in absolutes. It's too easy to shrug shoulders and say that's the way it is. Change things, educate, invest in the people. If as a country we don't focus on these issues then they won't change. I'm not saying anything you'd said is incorrect, just my focus is on how to fix it rather than complaining about people for human nature. It's easy to be lazy and take a handout so some elements will take that road.

And what I mean is, end the easy handouts. If you're able bodied, earn your dole, etc.

But it's late and if I stay posting on a forum all night I'll lose my job and be looking for a handout too!

How do you change a mindset where it's considered acceptable to allow an 18 month old child run barefoot across a road without any supervision?
I guarantee you, if you or I were letting our children do that, they would be taken into care and we would most likely be prosecuted and correctly so!

[gonzo76]

How do you change a mindset where it's considered acceptable to allow an 18 month old child run barefoot across a road without any supervision?
I guarantee you, if you or I were letting our children do that, they would be taken into care and we would most likely be prosecuted and correctly so!

I don't have an answer to that, I can't conceive of the mindset that would let it happen. I would hope that the vast majority of parents similarly couldn't conceive of that happening and that protective services step in when these cases did occur. But I'm a bleeding heart, maybe there are too many such cases and the services are overloaded?

All of these things take decades, generations to fix. When I was a kid, I was able to wander for miles and miles unsupervised from the time I could ride a bike or climb a tree and I had a great childhood. These days someone would report my parents I imagine!

[The Libertarian]

Essentially, if you live in an area where there are large numbers of travellers, you will fairly quickly encounter something which will be so completely out of the norm that your jaw will drop!
And if you relate your experiences of living among them to folk who don't, it will be so far beyond their life experience they will question you!
I said to a sky TV rep, that in my area it's not possible for a non traveller to have a satellite dish on their house, because traveller kids with ADHD will hop rocks of them, they won't do it to traveller families in case of starting feuds and he said to me he had never ever heard of anything like that before!

In my sister's area, they were playing football with these abnormally heavy footballs and broke the back windscreen of a neighbour's car and made sure they got the ball back and went away and faced no consequences.
Another time I saw one of them, same shower, hitting heavy stones with a hurl over other people's houses, beside his own and one of his bros, another time throwing sliotars at windows! This sort of shit is completely intolerable!

[The Libertarian]

I don't have an answer to that, I can't conceive of the mindset that would let it happen. I would hope that the vast majority of parents similarly couldn't conceive of that happening and that protective services step in when these cases did occur. But I'm a bleeding heart, maybe there are too many such cases and the services are overloaded?

All of these things take decades, generations to fix. When I was a kid, I was able to wander for miles and miles unsupervised from the time I could ride a bike or climb a tree and I had a great childhood. These days someone would report my parents I imagine!

You weren't a very small child and you weren't barefoot!
Our social services are full of folk from nice middle class backgrounds and if they were alerted to this in the traveller community they would rationalise out that it was a cultural matter!

[gonzo76]

You weren't a very small child and you weren't barefoot!

No but similarly compare it to today. In my day four kids in the back of a Renault 12, no seatbelts, no car seats.

Today that would never happen. My point is more that these changes are almost generational in their timescales.

It takes resources to improve these things and I think the resources are being wasted in the wrong way. Hopefully in 20 years, things will have progressed and the issues we deal with are milder and rarer than today, much like the car seat analogy, things will improve and progress, and fewer negative outcomes.

[Barney Rubble]

The thing nobody has picked up on is the fact she was married when she was 15 - like WTF !!!
Is her husband on the sex offenders list for having sex with a minor?

If 1 of us are arrested and convicted for visiting an escort (a consenting adult btw) we will be put on the sex offenders list.

What sort of a fucked up society do we live in ?