By Staff Reporter

Mayor of South Dublin Sarah Holland, has commended the Tallaght Roma Integration Project (Trip) on their work with the Roma community in Dublin 24.

The Trip team concentrated on accessing health care, as members of the Roma community had reported falling through the safety net and were finding it incredibly difficult to get GP care.

This resulted in long waits at A&E or avoidance of medical care altogether due to a lack of money, according to Trip.

In response, the project set up a mobile GP bus outside Tallaght Hospital before moving to a premises in Chambers House.

The service is run by the HSE with Roma volunteers who act as translators and encourage members of the community to access the service.

Mayor Holland said Trip had “provided an enormous service to our community as a whole, particularly to the Roma community, who suffer an inordinate amount of discrimination.

“In some instances, the volunteers did not feel safe going home alone from their work in Chambers House, and had to be escorted for fear of being accosted.

“In this day and age, we should hang our heads in shame that citizens who are giving their time free of charge to provide a community service are being targeted, simply because of their ethnicity. ”

The mayor described the project as a huge success, with attendance increasing annually, and called for the models’s expansion “all over Dublin local authorities and beyond, anywhere that groups of Roma are living.

“Healthcare in Ireland certainly has its problems, but us as a society should not countenance the exclusion of certain groups from this vital service,” she added, saying that South Dublin County Council is “leading the way on social inclusion projects, and other local authorities should follow their example.”