Travellers and Roma in Ireland: Understanding Hate Crime Data through the Lens of Structural Inequality

Ireland’s Traveller and Roma populations, although distinct, face a number of shared challenges, the most concerning of which is deep-rooted and widespread racism. At the same time however, there is little documented evidence of hate crime against these two communities. This chapter addresses the paucity of data on anti-Traveller and anti-Roma hate crime with specific reference to the Republic of Ireland. Following a profile of the two communities and a discussion of anti-Traveller and anti-Roma racism in Irish society, we focus on examining the possibilities for Traveller and Roma visibility offered by official and civil society hate crime recording mechanisms. The remainder of the chapter discusses the particular relevance of a number of recognised and less acknowledged obstacles to reporting for Traveller and Roma communities in Ireland. The chapter concludes that the paucity of documentation of anti-Traveller and anti-Roma hate crime in Ireland is both a function of, and contributes to, extreme structural inequality.