Eileen Flynn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Sorry - I was at the Committee on Autism meeting. I am also a member of the disability committee.

For me, this is about the importance of having everybody participate in society and have equal access to education. This committee got to visit Ballyfermot College of Further Education a few weeks ago. I myself went to Ballyfermot College. I have not seen since or before then its level of support for people who are vision-impaired or blind or students who are deaf. We need to see that in every university, school and college in the country.

For me, one of the questions that is raised here is how many students at present in our universities or in higher education are vision-impaired or have visual issues. Do the witnesses know about that? Then how many of those students go on to seek employment? A lot of the time we can talk about the issues in education or what people have to deal with and getting those people supports. We need to be very ambitious as a society in that the more training we do, the more SNAs we will get in to be able to support students. On this committee we have done a lot of work around supporting SNAs because some of us know how critical it is to have that support for our students.

There are also the courses in Trinity College, say, for interpreting. How do we make that more approachable for people to access? I know that Ballyfermot College is doing a course on introduction to interpreting. That is so important. I myself would be interested in doing it someday, maybe. A cohort of people we leave behind are people who are visually impaired and their community. When I was running for the Seanad, there was a young man who was deaf and who was also trying to get a seat in Parliament. Even here, close to home, in Leinster House, we are not very friendly when it comes to people who are visually impaired or deaf. The Committee on Disability Matters has an interpreter who does sign language throughout all its meetings. We welcome that in the communications department, but we need to see more of it. We need to see the participation of people within society.

My question is how we would do that. I know it is a very broad question but in our education system and political system, and also in terms of employment, how do we bring about access? Again, in terms of education for the young child in primary school, where the teacher is not trained and people do not have the services, how do we give people access to the opportunity to be successful?