Traveller Equality and Justice Project Partners

The TEJP is made up a consortium the School of Law's Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights and Traveller rights organisations in Cork & Kerry.

Under the Rights Aware (2024) activities, the TEJP is proud to partner with Kerry Travellers and Travellers of North Cork to provide education, employment and training opportunities to Travellers, while seeking to embed all actions within the Traveller community, to build legal and rights-based capacity and knowledge.

This unique partnership between a Law School and Traveller community groups creates a strong and inclusive approach to the issues, through legal service provision from experienced lawyers and robust academic research creation through participatory community-engaged research by Travellers and key experts in the field of Traveller rights.

Ancillary to the core partners, TEJP has also worked closely with the IHREC legal team in 2022-2023, who have provided legal information and support to TEJP service-users through their 'Know Your Rights' project.

About The CCJHR, UCC:

The Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights is an established research centre based in UCC's Law School with a focus on teaching, research and advocacy on criminal justice and human rights issues. It has been at the forefront of research relating to social justice and human rights and has an established track record in working with the Traveller Community in Munster.

It has previously worked on a project funded by the Irish Research Council through which academic and research staff have provided discrimination workshops for Traveller groups and have submitted to public consultations on Traveller rights for the Oireachtas and Local Authorities. This groundwork forms the starting point for the TEJP project.

In addition, the members of the CCJHR bring extensive experience of carrying out high quality impactful and Community orientated research as well as delivering training, event planning and social media dissemination.

The UCC Staff (Core Team):

Dr Fiona Donson, Co-Director.
Dr Samantha Morgan-Williams, Co-Director

Traveller Group Engagement:

The TEJP is proudly fully-community engaged and designed. The project objectives, supporting Travellers in responding to day-to-day discrimination were informed by the six Traveller community development projects in Cork & Kerry.

Under our former funding, the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020) Grant Agreement number: 963353 — TEJP — REC-AG-2020 / REC-RDIS-DISC-AG-2020 the TEJP built upon existing research produced by the School of Law, UCC with the Cork Traveller Women’s Network into best-practice formats of Traveller-specific legal clinics. Prior to this, research was completed with funding from the Irish Research Council New Foundations Scheme focusing on the need of the Traveller Community regarding legal clinics to challenge discrimination in accessing goods and services (2019). This small research piece was created in partnership with local Traveller groups and identified the need for Traveller-specific legal assistance in light of the barriers Travellers face in accessing representation.  

Under the EU REC Grant, the TEJP partnered with the Traveller groups, operational in Cork & Kerry:

Travellers of North Cork
Kerry Travellers Health and Community Development Project
West Cork Travellers
East Cork Travellers
Traveller Visibility Group
Cork Traveller Women's Network

In creating Munster’s first Traveller specific legal service, in March 2021, the TEJP sought to build capacity of Traveller Community and to allow them to action their right to equal treatment under both domestic and EU legislation. The TEJP also provided equality law and rights training to the above groups, while also supporting their legal advocacy and human rights campaigns work. Unfortunately, due to funding, the TEJP Clinic is no longer open, although we are continually reviewing this.