spot of drizzle. further south and east, some clear breaks, one or two places in south—east england could to 3—4 degrees. for the vast majority, it is frost free into tomorrow morning. and then for tomorrow, the further south you are, a lot of dry weather, some hazy sunshine, outbreaks of patchy rain across the northern half of the uk, will tend to ease for a time, but then wet weather likely return to northern ireland and western scotland later on. temperatures here around 15 degrees, but further south and east, warmer than today, highs of 20, temperatures climbing in the south as we head towards the middle of the coming week, but there will be some rain at times across the north of the uk. hello, this is bbc news with martine croxall. the headlines... the uk education secretary warns the longer england's schools are closed, the more children miss out, as the government presses forward with plans to re—open them. the best way of protecting children, the best way of giving them

the best opportunities in life, is actually to have them coming back into school. day—trippers are warned to stay away from rural and coastal areas of england this weekend amid fears the number of infections could rise. people in italy will be able to travel both internally — and in and out of the country — from the beginning ofjune, as the country's strict lockdown eases top flight football is back in germany — the bundesliga is the first major european football league to restart, with matches taking place in empty stadiums. now on bbc news, irish society has changed in recent years, but discrimination against travellers remains widespread. our world meets three women fighting to bust the myths about their community. ireland. a place long associated with religion and conservative values.

but, over the last few years, the country has reinvented itself as a new and progressive ireland. in 2017, the irish government extended this spirit of inclusivity to its traveller population. as taoiseach, i now wish to formally recognise travellers as a distinct ethnic group within the irish nation. but three years on, has anything changed 7 that's 2017. but 2020 is still the same way. discrimination is getting more worser than before that was brought out. we are not animals, we're not criminals, we are not trying to do anything bad. we are not the people that people are trying to portray us as. the fact that there is so much adversity faced by travellers in ireland today is a shame

upon us all. the 0'reilly family have lived near enniscorthy for the past four years. they currently live on family—owned land in a makeshift halting site with no toilet nor shower. this is a new little filly. double bred doncaster. she is number one on the planet. she's two—year—old, there's nothing out there like her. she is mine now. there is me sister margaret, her husband, my brother, his wife,

then there's my family — my mother and my four younger brothers and sisters. two girls and two boys actually living here at the moment. this is the new baby margaret. this is the new baby margaret has. currently there are no men on the site. noreen‘s father and eldest brother are both in prison. they are well known in the traveller community as the rubber gang. it is a nickname to say the robbers. it's like mine. i have it printed here. that's my husband, patric ‘rubber‘ rogue. the family say that police attention has always been intense. when the guards hear earlier, that is a big deal like the rubber gang is back

and when they hear the 0'reilly‘s in town, the off—duty guards are told to come back on because the criminals are back in town. if something goes missing, like if it's downtown and a shop gets broken into, they're the first target. it is all down to gang name, the rubbers. the name's been on my family for years, it is down to them. my father is locked up, my brother is locked up so for that reason, everything is just based around my family. it is notjust one, it is all the travelling community. and no matter how much they fight or they try to get out there, to get people to accept them, it will never happen because in 50 years' time, i think my daughters or my granddaughters will be here telling the same story. it is hard to get them heavy and hard to get fat in them. it's hard to get a filly like this.

it keeps you occupied. it keeps you all from going out on the towns. getting messed up and fighting. i'm afeared that the kids get it in their heads that the guards keep picking at their fathers and their brothers, "here, we're getting blamed for things, here, we'll do it!" "if we're getting blame for it, we'll do it." if the travelling community could get work, if they could getjobs, there would not be as much crime probably going ahead. unemployment within the travelling community in ireland currently stands at 80%. 18—year—old noreen would like to get a job but fears it is not possible. every girl would like a job. i would love to be a beautician but i know even if i start courses and do things, you're not getting no further because i will get no job and get nowhere. even if she got the qualifications, she thinks she'd only be able to offer her services from home to other travellers

because she believes people would not hire a traveller woman. working from home is only one thing you will be doing. you'll still be cooking, you'll still be cleaning while you're at home. because you are not going to be doing things every day. it is not nice for travelling girls to have a dream, and all it is is a dream that's never gonna come true. i heard this knock and i stood up and looked out the window here and there was two guards down there at the front. straight away this panic came over me and i screamed. "chris! " no, it was a lot louder than that. and there were two detectives at the door and i was genuinely waiting for them to tell me one of me children was dead, god forbid.

0r someone belonging to me was dead, orthere had been a terrible accident. and i looked and said "are ye guards? " they said they were from kilkenny city council kilkenny county council and they were here to serve you an eviction notice. star stokes and her husband chris purchased their first home in october last year and moved in with their eight children. but less than two months later, they were given an eviction notice from the local council, who claimed they were in breach of a planning condition. they believe it is only being enforced because they are travellers. i like it because it is bigger and we can do our own thing here and there is loads of space. maybe in time to come when one of them gets married, and gets a wife, there is loads for room for them to pull in a caravan. you can have yourfamily around you at all times

and that is what travellers like. my main dream growing up was owning a house in the country and having a big large family. that is what my dream was and i never thought i'd have it, to be honest. two of their eight children have disabilities and the house has been life—changing for the eldest son paddy. it feels more comfortable because, obviously, i have a wheelchair because i only have one leg. but the doors of the house of the last house, they were too small and not wide enough. this is perfect because everything is downstairs for me. the kitchen, even my bedroom is downstairs and the toilet, everything. the family purchased the property from a local auctioneer who was happy to sell to the stokes family. but when people in the local area found out, they tried to stop the sale.

we were not aware of how bad the neighbours were carrying on. it was the auctioneer who went through complete and utter hell, stopped on the street, "is it true? "are there travellers moving in? "you didn't sell them the house, did you, michael?" he said he did. they're not bad people, he said. they're a family that needed it. in parts of ireland, planning rules have a requirement for local connection to the area, which they say helps conserve and protect agricultural land. he said there is a bit of a clause, the previous owner applied for planning on the front entrance and she was granted planning to make it wider. she was meant to hold onto the house for seven years but she only held onto it for two years. the bbc spoke to several locals

who preferred not to go on camera. they confirmed complaint letters had been sent to the council and, while they acknowledged they knew nothing about the stokes family, they spoke of travellers having a reputation for criminality and their fears that the area would become unsafe. 0thers mentioned that the planning rules were made to protect the area and travellers should not expect to get around these rules. you are in a trailer off the side of the road, they will come along and send you on your way because they don't want you there. ok, no problem. but we went and brought our own property and we are still not allowed to live in peace. that is me and chris about three years ago now. family friend noel murphy, who is not a traveller

but lives in the local area, has been horrified at the level of complaints due to the family moving in. any area where they lived, they were involved with people in the community and all that kind of stuff so they don't live that traveller life that we think travellers do. chris and star don't. they are more like settled people but they have that heritage. i think country people are a lot less likely to give travellers a chance, rather than city people, because city people are used to them now. they have been integrated with travellers for an awful long time. country people are not. they can be snobbish about their area and they don't want outsiders, least of all travellers. we are used to our life and it is something we learn

to accept but when it hits home like that, with an eviction notice, it threatens where you live and where you want to live... you have to to fight back and that is what we are doing. fighting back. my biggest fear is that they board up the house and make us leave. that is my biggest fear. ireland's relationship with its traveller population has never been an easy one. for years, the government worked on a policy of assimilation and enacted laws to try and bring travellers into the general community. three years ago, the irish government changed position and recognised travellers to be an indigenous and distinct ethnic minority. since then, there have been moves to educate the population on traveller history.

speaker: senator colette kelleher up to speak, and you have 12 minutes to outline your case, please. senator colette kelleher is behind a government bill that is still in its early stages to teach traveller culture and history in schools. today, i'm presenting the traveller culture and history and education bill, which is a bill seeking to right some of the wrongs in our education system that particularly affect people from the travelling community. as hannah mcginley. .. when you look at the hard facts and statistics about travellers' healths, mental healths, employment, accommodation, education, i mean, when you look at those hard facts, really the situation travellers find themselves in in ireland today is nothing short of a scandal. there's a group of people living in our republic who are being treated very, very badly. it's the last acceptable

form of racism. there's a gaping hole in our history around our only recognised ethnic minority. when we know better, when we're better informed, then i think the chances are of that prejudice and of that discrimination and that, kind of, stigmatising and othering of people would diminish. 19—year—old temera is a student at maynooth university. so many different people from, like, all over the place. all different accents. this college does absolutely everything, there's, like, 60 subjects to pick from. last year, she was on a course designed to prepare students from marginalised communities to become teachers.

this year, she's embarking on a degree in the hope of making her dream of becoming a teacher a reality. if i was asked, i wouldn't say i wasn't, but i'd never really bring it up unless i knew the person, kind of thing. so it's not like something — "hi, nice to meet you, i'm a traveller", no. it's not something you say. well, i wouldn't say it. temera grew up in bray, a town just outside dublin. most of her family are settled travellers. not all travellers are exactly the same. i'm a traveller, i'm a young traveller in college wanting to be a primary school teacher. i knew it was possible but then after talking to her i thought, "she knows it all... i know it all! who knows it all? temera was aborted on the teaching course by director and mentor katrina.

they've stayed in touch since. you have to get connected with the access office because i know you text me in the middle of the night and all, but they're the people that can link you and get the information you need much quicker than i can. i met temera actually in an interview and it was probably the funniest. don't embarrass me, katrina! don't embarrass me, katriona! it's not embarrassing. she came in, she had fake tan on her hands, which i can relate to, because i have fake tan stains myself. it was the summer! and i just remember clearly in the interview, obviously i know the stereotypical information about travellers, young traveller women get married, don't go to education, blah, blah, blah, and you're not about to ask about that stuff in interviews but i wanted to explore with temera if she had family support. so, i remember saying to temera, "what do your family think

about you being here?" and i remember she said off—the—cuff, "well, me nanny and my mammy are supporting me here, "and i'm17 now anyway, so i'm too old to be married, "so i may as well become a teacher." i would get married but there's no rush. do you think you'd marry a traveller? no, i don't think so. why? i don't know. it's not like i'm saying i wouldn't but it depends on the person. it's not like i'd be going out specifically looking for a traveller husband. do you know that kind of way? like, if i found him and then he was a traveller, right, but if i found him and he wasn't a traveller, it's not a big deal either, do you know what i mean? woooh! come on, you have to have a go now. can you flip pancakes? no. you told me you can cook and clean. i'd burn an egg if you let me, i would! 0nly13% of traveller women stay in school past the age of 16, compared to 69%

of the general population. but this hasn't put temera off pursuing her dream as a teacher. you got on the course because you're, like, a young, vibrant female who demonstrated the ability to speak and you had motivation. it wasn't about you being a traveller, that's was just an added box to tick for the course. i'm pressuring you to be a teacher because i know little girls like you need to see people like you. i was on the course last year and there was one traveller, me. and i was going to say, in the space of me graduating, in the space of three months, four more travellers are on that course. my sister, she's only 12 now, so she's a good, like, eight years to go. hopefully by the time she gets to it, hopefully there isn't something, a barrier, she will have to put up with. by then there will be a good few travellers in education where it's

literally a normal thing, like, you shouldn't have to be standing up in a class and say, like, "my name's temera, i'm a traveller." two weeks have passed and the stokes family have heard back from the council. this was an eyesore in the community for the last 11! year. but it's not good news. and the minute a traveller buys the house — it's disgraceful. very bad news really. the response we got two days ago, we're no further on. basically what he said in the letter and the e—mail is we don't fit the criteria, we have no links to the area. it's not fair in this modern world that we have to highlight our children's disabilities, explain to you that we live in caravans and tents in and out of this place. we're all married a mile away from this place. it's not fair that

we have to do that. the family have been told to either apply for new planning, despite already being told they don't fit the local criteria, or sell the house. am i meant to look for another locale in the area? i don't know. because that's the only market we're allowed to obviously sell to, if that's the case — if you're only allowed to live here if you're from the area — so only someone from the area can buy it, so we're already restricted to how many we can sell it to, but that's not even an option. we are not animals, we are not criminals, we're not trying to do anything bad... you know, we're not these people that people are trying to portray us as. the typical traveller way, that everything we do is illegal and how we do things is illegal, but we're trying to do the right thing and we're not let. i thought by buying our own house, moving into it, that everything will be fine. never in a million years... i knew there would be a bit of an uproar, i knew

there would be an uproar — "oh my god, the traveller has moved in beside me, what's going to happen?" fairenough! after a couple of months, i said they'll be fine, everything will be fine... that we're human! it has started to affect us more now because we are sick of the rejection after rejection. it's looking to me that they want us to just throw in the towel and back off. she's meant to turn around and say, "ah, chris, i don't want to live "in that area and bring up my kids in that area," but it's not working for me. i'm going to stay here as long as i can, i'll fight it as long as i can, because, no matter where we go, we'll deal with that. just looking at him, i'm genuinely afraid. i have said it to him — "you're going to have a mental breakdown". this case is going nowhere in court, and we need to put it to an end for the family's sake. will you do that? probably sounds a bit too far—fetched, but i'm afraid in me

life that the best part of our years — the next ten years, 20 years — the important years for the children to set them up as people fortheirfuture, it'sjust going to be consumed with all the racism, the house thing, all these things that shouldn't be happening to us. kilkenny county council's planning department has told the bbc that it deals with all complaints impartially and entirely rejects any suggestion that it has acted in a discriminatory manner. they say it considered all necessary information in the categories set out in the local area plan that doesn't allow for consideration of exceptional health circumstances or disabilities. since filming, kilkenny county council has agreed with the stokes that there will be no legal proceedings, including action towards eviction, until all possible non—legal solutions have been explored and exhausted.

three weeks after filming, noreen surprised everyone — she got married. hello. let's see what the weather is up to in the next week or so. well, it does look as though it's going to be warming up once again, temperatures could hit the mid or even the high 20s by the time we get to the middle part of the week, but, with that, also a fair bit of cloud for the rest of the weekend and also into next week and you can see that cloud streaming in from

the south—west, carried on very warm, moist south—westerly winds and these are rain bearing clouds as well, warm fronts and low as well, weather fronts and low pressure associated with this. so the forecast for sunday shows that warmer air is spreading into north—western areas of the uk, but, here, that boundary between the colder air and the north and the warm air to the south will be a weather front, so there's certainly a soggy spell on the way for western scotland early in the morning. you can see those blue colours there. but it should fade a little bit, at least the middle of the afternoon, before this next area of wet weather approaches just off the coast of northern ireland there. that will go over scotland during the night. all the while, to the south and the east, the weather's going to be mostly dry, hazy sunshine and it's going to be a fairly warm sunday. so here is that rain again as it crosses scotland, the lake district, parts of yorkshire, through the course of sunday night. and the temperatures won't be low at all. in fact, early on monday morning, we are talking about 11 degrees in belfast and in liverpool, for example. so on monday and into tuesday, we will continue to see a daisy

chain of weather system is developing here.s developing here. basically, we got high pressure to this end, the good weather. we got the clouds with bouts of rain to the north. so it is that sort of north—western portion of the uk that's pretty much lying in track and that's where we're going to see those areas of rain moving through. so from northern ireland to scotland but a bit of sunshine as well. to the south on monday, temperatures will be getting up to 23 degrees but, more widely, i think, in the teens. now here's tuesday, it's the same pattern, it's not shifting, it's pretty much locked in this position, so we got the high to the south and weather fronts brushing the north—west of the uk. so, on tuesday, it could be wet for time across scotland for a time across scotland but to the south and to the east, the weather's going to remain bright, even sunny and those temperatures will keep on climbing. we will be hitting the mid 20s in the south—east by the time we get to tuesday. and, then, beyond that, it looks like the warmest day of the week is going to be wednesday. so, on wednesday, temperatures could get up as high as 27 celsius. so at least 26 in london.

in cardiff, it will get up to around 23 and, in the north of the country, a very comfortable i7, even 19 degrees there in scotland. now, beyond that, beyond wednesday, as we head into thursday, weather fronts start to approach but, this time, different orientation. remember, so far, it will have been moving in that sort of north—easterly direction, from the south—west to the north—east. the weather front is expected to cross the country during the course of thursday into friday, which means it's going to allow that fresher air off the atlantic to spreading and, the atlantic to spread in and, in fact, you can see, end of the week, low pressure systems moving through, so that means that, next weekend, it looks like it could turn quite unsettled but, after that, from about sunday onwards, sunday night onwards into monday, we are going to see high—pressure building back in across the uk and that means that it will settle down. so here is the summary for the next week or so. it is going to be largely dry and sunny, it's going to be warming up but turning unsettled as we head

into the weekend. that's it from me, bye—bye.

standing firm on plans to re—open schools in england next month — the government says decisions are being made based on the best scientific advice. the education secretary acknowledged some parents and teachers' had anxiety — but said the longer children were out of school the more damaging it would be. the best way of protecting children, the best way of giving them the best