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In 1963, after the publication of the Report of the Commission on Itinerancy, the Irish Government embarked on a national programme for the 'settlement', 'assimilation' and 'rehabilatation' of Irish Travellers. This paper is concerned with the power effects of discourse both driving and mobilised by the Report and with how liberal forms of thought and political rationality have considered the treatment of individuals and groups condidered to be without the 'attributes' of juridical and political responsibility'. (Dean, 1999:134). The paper describes how Traveller society 'imagined' and reconstructed during this period through elite discourse and the use of statistical inscriptions; how these mechanisms of representations facilitated and legitimated intervention into their everyday lives, rendered Travellers visible and permitted their characterion as a 'group', a 'community' in need of reform.