Ms Elaine Grehan:

On improvements in playgrounds and county council areas, I am always happy to see when we make accessibility better, but sometimes those things happen without consultation with the people with the disability. For example, in one playground, diagrams of finger spelling of sign language were installed, but the American alphabet rather than the Irish Sign Language, ISL, alphabet was used. That was done without consultation. While it is fantastic to introduce sign language, the information and sign language depicted in social, personal and health education, SPHE, books used in curriculums in schools is American Sign Language. That is a clear example of how we are not consulted.

The second thing I would like to talk about is who is responsible for what. In the Irish Deaf Society, as I mentioned already, we do not have all of the necessary resources, but we are willing to help in communities where deaf people live to see how they are getting on or where deaf people are living in nursing homes or independently in communities. Who is responsible? Is it the HSE or the nursing homes? Who is responsible for sign language access? Nobody seems to know. The role of advocacy is important. We need to work with the people with staff and communities who have access to budgets to help and assist other people. Sometimes staff lower down in the grading structure have less knowledge and do not know who to ask higher up for access for the deaf person they are in contact with.

We cannot change anything until we are at the table in consultation with the decision-makers. It is important if the HSE wants deaf people to assist other people living in isolation in communities to continue living independently, or a deaf person with autism or a deaf person who is also a wheelchair user. It is not just about providing an interpreter and that is it for the consultation; it is more. That person lives all day long in their community or all day long in a nursing home. It is not just about providing an interpreter for a meeting, which is great, but what about the rest of the day? Likewise in schools, one can provide an SNA for a child while they are in school, but what happens in the rest of their day? We need to be included in the community.