Quite clearly not, that statement is nothing more than a red herring and you know it. A glorified boys club is incomparable to a group of people living and breeding with each other for 1000+ years.
No, Irish travellers are a "distinct genetic group from settled Irish as Icelanders are from Norwegians".
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/health/dna-study-travellers-a-distinct-ethnicity-156324.html
That's a 1250 year old nation that was under Norwegian rule for 118 years, it had been settled on by Norsemen and Vikings and hasn't been ruled by Norway for 700 years. That's the same period of time that Irish travellers, unlike settled Irish, would not have been fraternising and breeding with Norman settlers who provided many common Irish surnames, such as anything starting with Fitz or De/D' and many more. These are names that very few, if any, Irish traveller families have, I couldn't find any after skimming through this.
http://www.travellerheritage.ie/parish_records_of_surnames.asp This is really where the most significant scientific distinction of ethnicity lies between settled Irish and Irish travellers because the Norman influence on this country was absolutely huge.
Again that statement is made to be misleading. Gay and deaf communities have their own culture but they don't have unique marital, working and religious traditions like Irish travellers nor their own language, sign language is incomparable here as it's used out of necessity and they don't all live in a way as distinct from the wider communities they live in as Irish travellers do to the settled Irish.
If it wasn't a comparison it was certainly malicious considering that you used the Amish as an example in this post which would have been a far better example, alb
eit still wrong, to the point you were trying to make.
An ethnic group is described as
"a community or population made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent." I don't understand how a group with their own language and all their other cultural distinctions who have separated themselves from and been separated from the settled community which they likely came from for 1000+ years to the point where they do have scientifically distinguishable DNA aren't an ethnic group.
Another point which backs up them being their own ethnic group is that if a settled person were to marry a traveller and live like a traveller it wouldn't make them one, their kids would be travellers, well half traveller, but they wouldn't. Quite like if a white Norwegian were to marry a white Icelandic and move to Iceland their ethnicity doesn't change.
