Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry for my lateness. I was listening in. I had an issue some years ago with a student who studied music.

The Department made her life very difficult in that it would not allow her to continue because of her hearing loss. She had graduated hearing loss over a period of time. I found the Department to be very rigid and difficult. Its position was that because she could not do the listening part of the music exam, she had to step away from music altogether. Music was her first love. If one goes down through the history of music, some of our greatest ever composers had hearing loss. Can our guests speak to that please and do they find dealing with the Department of Education to be a very rigid and difficult experience with a very old-fashioned view of who can and who cannot do certain subjects, and is music just one of those?