Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the work they do in Chime. Mr. Lennon provided very interesting detail in the past few minutes on the dynamics within the hearing loss world, if you like, and how the support system is determining practice, which it seems may not be good practice. He made a very good case. The point made by the WHO is that for every €1 invested the State gets a return of €16. On that basis, this seems a complete no-brainer, but that point does not seem to have been taken on board at all by the Department. I received a reply to a parliamentary question last year about a hearing aid plan, and there is no indication the Department is serious about it at all. That is something the committee should take up because, as has been made very clear, this whole area is very much overlooked. The point was made that nobody thinks twice about getting glasses to correct his or her vision at any age, whereas the attitudes to hearing aids are very different. That is part and parcel of the education programme that is needed.

Mr. Lennon talked about nearly a third of people opting for the level-1 hearing aid because of the fact it is free and the cost is fully covered by the State. How many levels of hearing aid are there?