![]() She struggled through secondary school with dyslexia – and was suspended on several occasions for rebellious behaviour – but Eileen and Sally broke through the system’s invisible barriers to make history by becoming the first Travellers from Labre Park to enter third-level education. Born and reared on a halting site with her parents and eight siblings, including her twin, Sally (to whom she remains close and who also works with a Traveller NGO (Non-governmental Organisation) in Dublin, she lost her beloved mother to pneumonia at the age of 10 and suffered multiple injuries in a serious traffic accident a few days later. Senator Eileen Flynn is a community development worker with the National Traveller Women’s Forumįor her own part, Eileen chose the path ‘less travelled', although the irony is not lost on her that should those Travellers who have carved out hard-won and successful careers among ‘the settled community’ choose to stand up and be counted, it might make her own job a heck of a lot easier.īut then life never handed Eileen Flynn any free passes. So, that is the reality of it – we all do what we need to do to get by and it’s really tough.” She said it was the talk of the nursing home when it was on the news, but she, like many Travellers, couldn’t reveal her true identity. “My auntie works in a nursing home and when I got appointed as senator, even she felt unable to say, ‘That’s my niece’. I know a doctor who works in a hospital in Dublin but feels he has to hide his identity and I know Traveller physios, school principals and those working on the front line in the health service fighting Covid. “Although we’re not seen to be in the ‘big’ jobs, we are there. ![]() “My reason for being in this role is to get the message out there that we are just as good and play an equal part in Irish society,” she says. A community development worker with the National Traveller Women’s Forum and activist who has campaigned on issues including homelessness, same-sex marriage and hate crime, she has spent most of her adult life fighting prejudice and discrimination from every corner. Not that this Irish senator – who made history by becoming the first woman from the Travelling community to sit in the Seanad after being nominated by Taoiseach Mícheál Martin last year – ever needs to be reminded of where she comes from. “They all take a real laugh out of me and say things like, ‘Oh, here comes the senator’ but they’re the best in the world and would take the coat off their back to give it to you if you needed it.” “I’m just ‘Eileen’, but I have to take a lot of ribbing from my family in Ballyfermot,” she laughs good-humouredly, speaking on the phone from her ‘other’ home in Ardara, Co Donegal, where she lives with fisherman husband, Liam, and their 19 month-old daughter, Billie. IF EVER Senator Eileen Flynn thinks she is in danger of becoming “big-headed” with her grand new title, a trip back home to Labre Park – Ireland’s first purpose-built housing scheme for Travellers – in Ballyfermot, west Dublin, quickly disabuses her of any ‘notions’.
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