This article is from page 2 of the 2014-07-08 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
AN UNNAMED Clare festival has been connected with Child A, a Roma baby wrongfully taken from her family by Gardaí last October.
The family of Child A were trading at a Clare music festival last July when an unidentified member of the public noticed the baby’s blond hair and blue eyes and later repor ted the incident to the Garda Missing Persons Bureau, describing it as a “suspected child abduction”.
This repor t led Gardaí to the removal of Child A from his family last October. The baby was later returned to his family after blood tests proved that Child A was a bio- logical part of the family.
According to details of the Logan Report, seen by The Clare People , the member of public repor ted the incident to the Missing Persons Bureau on October 21 last, three months after the sighting at the Clare festival. The report described the person stopping at a festival stalls to allow her child to have her braided when she noticed Child A.
“While my children were getting their braids in, I preoccupied myself with the little baby [Child A]. He had very blonde hair and the bluest eyes and his complexion was also fair… I commented on his colouring and the young woman then said ‘ehh his grandfather’ meaning he got his genes from his grandfather. Apart from the baby, all the others were completely dark in complexion, eyes and hair,” said the original email to the Garda Missing Persons Bureau.
Gardaí were able to identify the family by examining the details provided to Clare County Council by the family in order to obtain a licence to trade at the festival.
The Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald (FG) last week apologised to the family of Child A and called for all sections of society to work to tackling stereotypes.
According to Orla Ní Eili of the Clare Immigrant Suppor t Centre, there are between 200 and 300 Roma families cur rently living in Clare. Of these families, many Czech Roma, Slovak Roma and Polish Roma have blonde hai r and blue eyes.
“We have a well-settled Roma community in Clare who are getting on well and doing their best to make a future for themselves and their families,” she said.
“The circumstances that many of these families are coming from is horrifying. The level of discrimination that many of these people felt in thei r own country before coming here is hard to describe.”
The Clare Immigrant Support Centre is campaigning for better educational suppor ts in school to help Roma and other migrant children make a life for themselves in Ireland.