Dr. John Bosco Conama:

I will answer the Deputy's first and second questions and maybe the second-last question, if I can remember them all. I will do my best. I thank the Deputy for her questions. On how Ireland compares with other countries, that is my personal opinion. I make assumptions based on what I have seen in other countries.

For example, we do have deaf teachers here in Ireland but they are in more of a tokenistic role. Other countries have no deaf teachers. I might be wrong but I would say that at a European level, Ireland is grading somewhere in the middle in terms of the provision of deaf teachers. Less than 10% of deaf children are born to deaf parents. Deaf parents already have ISL, so those children grow up fluent in ISL and have access to ISL. We meet a smaller percentage of other parents who are very open-minded about learning ISL. We see that here.

We also have the home tuition scheme here. Other countries around Europe do not have that but we have it here. As Mr. Sherwin said, we need to upgrade the home tuition scheme. The provision is pretty basic and there are management issues around the scheme, including with the way the Department of Education runs it. The Department provides the funding to the parents and the parents then pay the fee to the home tutor. That can be complicated and challenging with regard to timing, payments and doing paperwork. It is quite a burden for parents to run.

Second, the Deputy told us about someone she met last week. I have full sympathy with that young man. He has his higher level qualification. I know many other deaf people who are in exactly the same situation. They have a degree and a qualification in a particular area. Research was done at a European level in a project called DESIGNS. The findings are available online. I can forward them to the members after the meeting. The project compares Ireland with the rest of Europe. In terms of the sciences, quite a high number of deaf people are teaching science in secondary schools. They are stuck in that environment and cannot move out of it. A lot of that is down to employer attitudes. Some deaf people do not want to disclose their disability or say that they are deaf. As Ms Grehan said, a lot of that is down to confidence. Ms Grehan and I cannot hide that we are deaf because we have to use sign language every day. We are more confident in using sign language. I have gone on to third level but for others it can be a much more vague situation. The IDS would be very happy to engage with the young man in question to see if we can offer some support. There are a lot of deaf people out there who are overqualified in the roles that they are in. Perhaps Ms Grehan would like to add to that.

We assume that we have 5,000 ISL users in Ireland. That is just through our own experience, in networking within the community. That is what we see. However, the census records do not match what we see. There is an issue with how the census asked the question, "Do you speak another language other than English or Irish at home?" Many deaf people read that question, related it to spoken language and answered "No", or other deaf people did not fill in the form at all. The head of house fills in the form. They may not have completed the form correctly and may have left out the answer to that question. We feel the census results do not match what we see on the ground. We have asked the CSO to engage with us on that. The Scottish census contains an excellent question on that.