Mr. Brendan Lennon:

On the technology piece, traditionally, up until about ten years ago, children who were born with hearing loss were often not diagnosed until they were two, three or four years of age. The average age of diagnosis was around three. Parents often did not know that their child had a hearing loss, and so, the interventions began after that, and typically, just as the child was about to enter school. Technology was provided to children in schools for those children who would benefit from it. They were called frequency modulated, FM systems. Essentially, what would happen is that the teacher would wear a microphone, and the speech from the teacher would go directly to a receiver in the child's hearing aids or their cochlear implant.

Without going into it in too much detail, that is a huge improvement in the sound quality of speech that the child is receiving. It makes it much easier to hear what is being said and to absorb new information, etc., which one needs to be able to do if one is in a learning situation. This equipment was provided in schools, but of course when we look at how children learn language and so on, an awful lot happens before they go to school. With the introduction of newborn hearing screening just over ten years ago, children are being diagnosed as early as two or three months of age. There is an opportunity for those children, who are following an oral-aural route and using hearing aids or cochlear implants, to benefit from this technology at home.