Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the issue of Irish Sign Language interpreters. The day the committee went to the school for the deaf, it struck me how difficult communication is for these children. There was one young woman who was a new attendee of that school, having gone through a mainstream school with support. While we may have thought about what the obvious difficulties were for this learner, what she said were her main difficulties were not what we thought. It is not a world that we live in. We live in a world where we can hear and we can verbalise our needs quite easily. I welcome this. I hope it is expanded further because the difference it makes to these young people’s lives cannot be underestimated. Other jurisdictions have carried out in-depth reviews around educational and academic attainment for students who are deaf. We do not do that at the moment. I do not agree with that and I believe it is something the Department should look at in the future in order to gauge and monitor this area. A fundamental part of that will be the availability of ISL translators. I hope it extends further.