Mr. John Sherwin:

To clarify, the advocacy service and the deaf careers service that we can offer and assist that young man with are unfunded and funded through fundraising efforts, which takes away from our ability to actually do this kind of policy work. That is part of what we are looking for in core funding.

The Deputy asked whether the early intervention is middling and what the service is like. At present, early intervention is the home tuition scheme. As we said earlier, the scheme is dysfunctional. There are quality control problems and a range of issues with it. We have submitted a comprehensive proposal to the Department of Education about how to address those issues, and we have received no response since 2018. Recently, we made a submission to the CSO when it was looking at how to update the questions for the next census. We are engaging with it on a range of improvements that make the questions clearer and to ascertain exactly what the size of the deaf community in Ireland is.

We were asked about the directions for deaf students like inclusive education, deaf schools, mainstreaming and all of these options, and what is best. We do not have an answer for that. Again, it comes back to that research-driven approach. Of course, the whole landscape of education is changing and has been changing since Dr. Conama's time in school. We need a research-driven approach to figure out what is best. We would also say that the best for one person is not the best for another person. There needs to be choice. At the moment, those choices are not there. We are seeing a lack of progress through to university. That process of not getting into university and not getting jobs above those that are low-paid starts when deaf people are marginalised from birth. As Dr. Conama has said, deaf people are working in jobs that they are overqualified for because there is a glass ceiling there that relates to stigma.