Changing times in the Travelling community

ANN Marie Bryan is a working mother with three sons, living in Quin with her husband, who works in Shannon. Ann Marie herself has a new job in Ennis and every morning she brings her three sons to school in Clarecastle.
None of this is particularly unusual, in fact it’s very ordinary but it’s not really the type of lifestyle most people would expect a young woman from the Travelling community to have.
Ann Marie had a variety of jobs before late last year when she took up her position as a regional reporter with the Voice of the Traveller magazine, a publication that’s trying to get closer to the constituency it serves.
“There have been five regional journalists taken on to get involved in getting information for the magazine. I’m contacting Traveller organisations and getting information from them and submitting it. The magazine is for Travellers, it’s about Travellers, it’s all over the country,” Ann Marie explains.
She says there is a lot of interest in the magazine from the community. “It’s always interesting finding out what’s going on with other Travellers around the country. You see all the achievements of the different organisations around the country and it’s good to acknowledge them. There’s a memory lane section in every issue with old photos and it just shows how far the Travellers have come.”
Literacy has long been an issue in the Travelling community, but Ann Marie says it has improved significantly in a relatively short space of time.
“Thank God it’s not like it was. In the last 10 or 15 years it has come up. Up until 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have heard of many doing their Leaving Cert. Now they’re going on to do it. Unfortunately, a lot of the older Travellers can’t read or write but the Traveller training centres are helping them.”
She feels that attitudes among Travellers towards education have shifted. “My age group, when we were young, once you could read and write a letter that was good enough. Now the Travelling women are going into the workforce, they’re more independent and they want more for their kids, not just for their sons but for their daughters as well.”
Ann Marie grew up in Cloughleigh. She says she didn’t encounter much prejudice growing up and didn’t isolate herself from non-travellers.
“I didn’t experience too much of it. Of course, you are always aware that you’re a Traveller and you’re not ashamed of it by any stretch of the imagination. It (discrimination) is not as bad as it was years ago, I think. It’s not tolerated as much now. The schools don’t really tolerate it anymore and that’s where you have to aim, young kids growing up. The Traveller community is more integrated. They used to keep to themselves but they don’t seem to anymore. I always mixed a lot with the settled community growing up. There were no other Travellers in Clancy Park when I was growing up.”
Now she is married to a man who is not from the Travelling community but she says that’s not as unusual as it would once have been.
Before taking the job with Voice of the Traveller, Ann Marie worked in a variety of positions around Clare. She says her ethnicity was never an issue.
“I think my generation were kind of the first. When we were young, most Travellers wouldn’t even apply for a job because they’d figure they wouldn’t get it. I’d always have thought why wouldn’t I get it? Any place I worked it didn’t make any difference. You went in and did your job. There are Travellers around now that have opened up their own businesses. Please God, in the next 10 years, you’ll see Travellers working as solicitors and doctors. There’s no reason why not,” she concludes.