The Irish Travelling Community is an Irish ethnic minority group. Travellers traditionally lived nomadically, but they have been forced to live off the roads over the past few decades due to government policies, laws causing shortages of halting sites, etc. At the 2011 census, around 29,500 Irish Travellers in the Irish Republic, making up 0.6% of the population. The community was found to be mostly living in County Galway and South Dublin. Researchers have found that while Irish Travellers originated in Ireland, they are genetically different from the 'settled' Irish people.
To learn more about this ethnic group, read the following information.
A recent study by the Royal College of Surgeons and Edinburgh University suggests that Irish Travellers emerged as a distinctive Irish group around 1657.
