Mr. John Sherwin:

Historically, there was a fear that teaching babies sign language would detract from their ability to acquire spoken language. Thankfully, that has been proven completely incorrect through research. In fact, all children, hearing or deaf, improved their ability to acquire spoken language by learning sign language. That is a research-driven conclusion but it has taken time for it to filter through the system. The Department of Education would say the home tuition scheme is how it addresses the section of the Irish Sign Language Act to which Dr. Conama referred. It does not acknowledge our critical reports that the system does not work properly, however. The Department of Education had the Irish Deaf Society performing Garda vetting for home tutors for a number of years until we had the situation examined and saw that legally we should not be doing that because we are not the employers of the home tutors. It creates a problem with us even receiving the disclosures about Garda vetting. We had to go back to the Department and tell it we cannot do that. It is run on a shoestring from the Department. It is not structured adequately. We sent in a proposal in 2018. The limit of the engagement from the Department on that proposal was a reply stating it had received the email. We have tried to follow up on this but with no success. Meaningful engagement with DPOs to find successful solutions is not happening. The Department is failing in the most egregious way as we are just being ignored. On this occasion, we provided solutions. We provided a structure for how we could take over the home tuition scheme and run it effectively in a much better way. We cannot always provide solutions but this proposal does have solutions.