The starkest statistics in 'Travellers' Last Rights', a study commissioned by the Parish of the Travelling People (PTP), were those about Traveller mortality compiled by Fr Stephen Monaghan, the PTP's parish priest, and Jacinta Brack, who was involved in the Citizen Traveller project.

Monaghan, who previously sat on the National Monitoring Committee for Travellers, said representations had been made to the then justice minister Michael McDowell to recognise Travellers as an ethnic minority. "It is now on the agenda for the committee to make similar representation to Brian Lenihan, " he said. "If Travellers were recognised in this way, it would give them a sense of identity and esteem. It would make access to a range of services easier. It is their culture and their traditions. Recognition would empower them to make their own decisions."

The Traveller Monitoring Committee was set up in 1995 in response to a report from the Task Force on the Travelling Community. That committee published just two "progress reports" in a decade, and its name was changed last April to the Travelling Monitoring and Advisory Committee by the then minister of state with responsibility for equality, Frank Fahey. Fahey has since been replaced by Se�n Power. The Department of Justice this weekend told the Sunday Tribune that the new committee's chairman, Kevin Bonner, would not be available for comment.

"There was a general view that it needed to be revitalised and made into a more dynamic and forward-looking national forum, " the Department of Justice website says of the committee, which will work in conjunction with the government programme 'Towards 16'. For the first time the 'Community Platform', featuring the National Traveller Women's Forum, the Irish Traveller Movement and Pavee Point, are represented after they signed up to the agreement.

But there is still no direct response unit in place to address the immediate problems highlighted by last week's report.