Mr. John Sherwin:

Deputy Higgins asked about barriers to employment. Normally, the Irish Deaf Society would have a deaf representative at a meeting like this. As a hearing person who is privileged to work with the Irish Deaf Society, I will comment on some of our activities, projects and policies, but I am not assuming to comment from the lived experience of a deaf person.

Employment barriers specifically for the deaf community start at the education level. Education is not delivering the same kinds of qualifications and abilities for deaf people as it does for hearing people. We have a position paper on education on our website. We have developed a deaf career project, which we are hoping to turn into a service. It is a guidance-based service that, at its core, encourages deaf people to think beyond a job to a career. There is no clear Irish Sign Language sign for "career". We have to build that up from the idea of a job. We are trying to break through a huge lack of ambition.

One of the problems is the lack of access to language and interpretation services in the workplace. Deaf people can get jobs at the lower rungs of the ladder but to progress into management, people need to be able to communicate clearly with other staff. A successful initiative in the UK is the access to work scheme, which provides for the costs of interpreters for deaf people throughout their working career. The cost of that scheme provides a net return to the British Exchequer when account is taken of the impact of pulling deaf people and their families out of the poverty trap and giving them the ability to pay taxes. There is an impact on a holistic level. The figure is something like for every £1 spent on the scheme, £1.20 goes back to the economy. That might be a function of the larger population in the UK. If such a provision were anywhere close to breaking even in Ireland, it could offer a very long-term supportive scheme that would see deaf people breaking through the employment barriers, which are, in essence, communication barriers.