[3] Joyce's father died in a police cell when she was twelve, and her mother was sent to prison for theft committed to support her family.

[3] She endured many hardships including prejudice and intolerance, as well as living by roadsides with no facilities, exposed to severe weather, leading to illness and despair.

People dumped their rubbish at Joyce's camp during the 1982 bin-collector's strike, which attracted rats, leading to the death of her one-year-old granddaughter, who caught meningitis from them.

Joyce's family from her marriage were living at a halting site in Clondalkin when they were forced out in 1981 by Dublin County Council bulldozers.

[notes 1] Some angry locals from the settled community threatened the Joyces and other Traveller families, giving them an ultimatum to quit the area.

[3][4] When they refused to move, hostile locals, with the support of some community politicians, organized a vigilante mob to patrol all open space in the area, and they visited the Traveller camp to intimidate them by wielding hurleys and shouting "Out!

[3] She read the local papers regularly and was disturbed by how they misrepresented the Traveller community: "I wouldn't wonder for the settled people to be against us because they were hearing nothing but bad about us," she said.

She gave talks around the country to schools, colleges, and convents to educate people about Traveller history and heritage.

[3] Joyce was selected by the committee to run as a candidate in the general election of November 1982, in the Dublin South-West constituency, becoming the first Traveller to compete for a Dáil seat.

Another constituency candidate, Richard O'Reilly, ran to oppose her on an anti-Traveller platform using the slur, "Get the knackers out of Tallaght" as his campaign slogan.

There, she created a group to fight for Travellers' rights and lobbied successfully for new halting sites in West Belfast with a fresh water supply, toilets, a playschool, and a clinic for babies.