Interesting to see the Phil Hogan travellers story. It’s remarkable the extent to which this is considered defensible. Anecdotally at least, I’m always surprised that anti-traveller attitudes are prevalent in otherwise quite socially liberal people.
I wouldn’t be surprised by this attitude from certain stereotypes (I refer masochists to politics.ie on this and any traveller-related story), but in my experience, even ostensibly left-leaning (or at least socially liberal) acquaintances, who wouldn’t countenance racism if asked, have some bizarre attitudes to travellers. The obvious test to try swapping the word travellers for black people and see if people still think it’s acceptible is always interesting – they’ll rarely admit the parallel.