Are you racist for criticising those who commit heinous crimes which wreak cruel havoc on the lives of others in addition to causing enormous harm, just because some of the perpetrators are Travellers?
Pavee Point, which pocketed around €2.27 million in public funding according to an annual report for 2024 (including €1.9 million in grants from the HSE), released a tone-deaf statement on Thursday in relation to the M9 crash which left me pondering that question.
Three out of five of those who were in the car which, it seems, deliberately drove the wrong way down the motorway – an action where the foreseeable consequence is death – were from the Traveller community.
They were Joey Carthy, 25, his cousin Alex McCarthy, 17, and Jerome O’Brien, 19.
So far, we know that Alex McCarthy and Jeremy O’Brien were well known to Gardaí in Carlow and Athy. Both were closely associated with Joey Carthy, the youngest occupant of the car. Both Carthy and McCarthy had come to the attention of officers for their alleged involvement in the theft of cars imported from Asia.
Meanwhile, the other two boys, Kamil Pustkowski and Jack Kennedy, had come to the attention of the Gardaí recently for their suspected involvement in stealing cars and dangerous driving. Pustkowski was understood to be the leader of the gang.
As reported by The Irish Times last night, the NGO’s co-director Martin Collins said the actions of the five who were in the car were wrong and had contributed to an “appalling tragedy” in which they had lost their lives and three sisters and a seven-year-old boy had been seriously injured.
“I know it was reckless and dangerous, but there has to be some level of compassion and humanity for those five young people and their families also,” said Collins, who himself is from the Traveller community.
Collins is a well-known Traveller activist who has been an advocate since the eighties, and has spoken about growing up in Finglas and leaving formal education after six years of school before eventually becoming a youth worker with young Travellers in Dublin.
“At the end of the day, you are talking about five young lads who are very immature doing what they thought was bravado,” said Collins, as reported by The Irish Times. “I can understand people’s anger and frustration, but this could happen to any cohort of people in Irish society.”
“If the five were all settled people, we wouldn’t get the reaction that we are getting now. I can’t understand why people are making an issue of their ethnic origins. To me it is totally irrelevant. The comments directed at the entire Traveller community is appalling stuff and that’s totally uncalled for.”
Collins, who has to his credit in the past acknowledged criminality in the community – while saying such behaviour shouldn’t be used to stereotype everyone – also said that Pustkowski was of Polish origin, but that the Polish community in Ireland was not being blamed for the actions of one teenager.
He also called on social media companies to start moderating their content in relation to Travellers.
This is no surprise, given that Pavee Point has been a big campaigner for hate speech legislation, and said the Bill scrapped in 2024 left Pavee Point feeling “let down and disappointed” – and that it was a “lost opportunity to prevent hate crime and protect communities.”
Collins said the social media targeting of Travellers after the crash had been “relentless,” adding: “We’re getting calls here quite often since that tragedy happened from other Travellers who were very concerned just about how the whole tragedy has been covered and the narrative which has emerged from it, which is, as I say, very racist in nature.”
There is so much to be said about his statement. For a start, the timing is abysmal.
There is a seven-year-old little boy lying in a hospital bed, while his mother and two aunties also fight serious and critical injuries. Many people throughout the country are praying they survive – but all of us dread to think about how life-changing their injuries may be. Is it really the time to be lecturing people, who are rightfully angry, about racism?
Secondly, I don’t see the Polish community in Ireland suggesting that people are being racist for criticism of Pustkowski.
I also don’t see anyone treating Kennedy or Pustkowski differently, or directing anger at them to a lesser extent, because they are not Travellers. There was anger before anyone knew the identity of those in the car – because driving down the wrong way of a motorway, on purpose, is just about the most reckless and dangerous thing you can do.
You or I, for not paying tribute to the dead teenagers, are the problem. TikTok is also the problem.
Look anywhere but at the State – which ultimately had the power to deal with these teenagers before this happened. Sure, somehow TikTok is the problem when the Gardaí should have arrested, and had the power to arrest, these teens after some of them had posted a string of videos online, for everyone to see, committing crimes.
Look anywhere but at the State’s child and family agency Tusla, who had one of these kids in its care and had engaged with two more.
Look anywhere but at our dysfunctional justice system which failed to keep the public safe. A justice system under which Pustkowski was well known to the Gardaí and which bailed the 17-year-old over offences related to being a passenger in stolen cars.
A flailing justice system which, in June, saw Kennedy arrested and released without charge for being part of a gang which drove a stolen car down the wrong side of the M50 motorway.
As for Pavee Point, they are effectively another arm of a State which refuses to get tough on crime.
Remember, the State can take hardline positions when it wants to, and can punish people when it wants – it is very much a political choice when it refuses to crack-down on teenage joyriders laughing about their crimes on TikTok.
For Pavee Point, to scold the public for racism or hurty words when the lives of an innocent family has been devastated is just tone deaf. Furthermore, this is an NGO which gets a couple of million euros every year from the taxpayer.
So the money is there to represent Travellers. You can talk about discrimination or a lack of youth clubs or feeling ostracised until the cows come home, but the reality is that very little is being done to call out deeply problematic behaviour within the community. What is being done to change the culture and make it better? Why are they not tackling the issues that allow these kinds of tragedies to continue?
A quick look at Pavee Point’s social media channels shows a big focus on Travellers and Roma people at LGBTQ Pride week and Traveller Pride Week and posts about Gaza and Roma resistance. There’s a lot of talk about racism. Are these really the biggest issues facing that community?
What about illiteracy rates or incarceration or crime? These things cannot be explained away by discrimination. It’s not that simple.
When do you ever hear a politician, for example, or anyone in Pavee Point, take a tough line on Traveller criminality? Irish Travellers make up about 0.6 per cent of the population, yet the prison population is about eight per cent Travellers.
This means that they are around thirteen times more represented in the prison population than in the general population. This is not to say that Travellers are bad people. Plenty of Travellers are law-abiding and hard-working. Many are known for being generous and good. But the cliche of “one per cent doesn’t reflect the other 99 per cent” is wearing thin.
Collins wants social media to be regulated to stop people from commenting mean things under Travellers’ posts – but what about the frequent Traveller call-out videos which very often feature threats of horrendous violence?
A few months ago, I remember a video of a gun attack in Limerick – a drive-by shooting linked to a traveller feud – was posted on social media. It showed a man wearing gloves pointing a shotgun out of a car window and pulling the trigger. Isn’t that incitement to violence? These videos are posted every other day.
Fair play to actor John Connors, who made a public statement when Scarlett Faulkner was murdered – and he received criticism from other Travellers for doing so – because you rarely hear anyone from within the community criticise the appalling level of crime, which is also, by the way, causing real harm to Travellers. Men chasing you with axes is far more life-threatening than hurty words.
Pavee Point would do infinitely more to improve the lives of the people it is paid to represent were it to speak frankly about the problem of criminality within the Traveller community. Pointing the finger at everyone else is easy – but it won’t make anything better for Irish Travellers.