Mr. Brian Crean:

Our department deals with about 500 deaf adults. They would often say they felt access was not good in terms of their experience in education. If they went to a vocational or other school, they would have felt left out perhaps because there was no interpretation available. We would have had 500 students of whom 71% would be unemployed. That comes down to the disability allowance system.

The disability allowance is good in some ways but it encourages people to remain on the disability allowance. It does not motivate people to get going and try to get back into doing things. I would have grown up in a hearing family. I got on well but my family would have taken the advice from the State about it not being good to use sign language straight away. The three of us who are representing the deaf community, and 93% of people in the deaf community, would say that if they had the chance to go back and be educated again, they would choose to be educated through Irish Sign Language from the very beginning. That is the reason we come looking for recognition for Irish Sign Language. We hope that in time, other children will not experience a repetition of our experiences but that the system will be able to remove the oppression that happened before in order that it is not repeated. We want to ensure there is access to ISL from the very beginning for deaf children.