Ireland's first Senator who is a member of the Travelling community says she wants to use her time there to champion hate crime legislation.
Senator Eileen Flynn was one of the 11 nominees appointed by Taoieach Micheál Martin.
She is the first Traveller to be a member of the Seanad.
She told The Hard Shoulder: "Settling in, I'm getting my feet underneath the table and putting up pictures and trying to organise meetings with groups and look at a way of going forward."
"This week has been brilliant, very busy with Traveller Pride Week, and two sittings - yesterday and today - it's actually tough work".
"Right now it's not about me creating the wheel because the wheel is already there.
"It's to get the Traveller Education and History Bill passed, it's to work and hopefully get hate crime legislation in Ireland.
"If I only worked on passing hate crime legislation in Ireland, Ivan, that's my job completed.
"That's what I'm extremely passionate about".
"Not one person in Ireland has ever been prosecuted for committing a hate crime.
"It would involve a person as throwing up hate, as being hateful towards a individual or community well then they can be prosecuted for it and they'll be took to court.
"They'll have to pay for what they've done to an individual or to a community."
"In many other countries, hate crime is very common - but here there's no action around it."
"I remember a few years ago I was in a group and a Muslim woman was sharing her story where she got spat at.... and for me, the person has to be brought to court for that kind of behaviour".
She is also involved with Traveller Pride Week, which she said is around diversity in the community.
"The diversity within is speaking around people within the Traveller community that have disabilities or are disabled, autisitc, married to people outside of the community, who are LGBTQI+, trans people.
"We're a community of 40,000 people but we're also individuals.
"And I think the diversity within is to celebrate our individual and our skills, our music, our language and to work along with our settled allies get settled people and the general population to be aware.
"These two weeks for the last 10 years have been promoting Traveller culture and raising awareness around Travellers in Ireland and beyond".
