Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I confirm that I am in my office in Leinster House. It is great to listen to Fiacre and Ms Ryan. It is heartening to see their story and I watched the RTÉ documentary yesterday evening.

I was in the education sphere. As far as I am concerned, my motto on all of these assistive technologies is that if they work for the individual or for the student, then as a school, community and a Department, we should be bending over backwards to help to assist any child or student in any way, shape or form that we can. I was interested to hear the earlier discussion when Ms Ryan read out the Department’s typical answers to her. It said it is not evidence based and that not enough research has been done. Is the Department conducting research at present on this technology? Has it committed to conducting that research, given the absence of the research it claims?

Second, I read that the Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists, IASLT, has misgivings about it. I will ask of it the same question I have asked about the Department, namely, is Ms Ryan aware whether it is conducting research itself on this? If it has committed to doing so, is she aware of any such thing?