Ms Eimear O'Rourke:

As a principal, I have the same struggles as every principal in Ireland when it comes to recruiting teachers. Until very recently, as mentioned, there were no graduates for primary education who were deaf themselves. We have many deaf teachers in the post-primary section of Holy Family School for the Deaf. There are 39 members of the teaching staff, including the deputy principal and me. Six teachers, to date, were deaf themselves. We are moving to nine, because I am delighted to report that three of the graduates from the Dublin City University, DCU primary Irish sign language, ISL track have been successful at interview and are going to join our teaching staff.

The key issue remains that a qualified teacher in the Irish system is not qualified to teach deaf children. Special education is a very small part of teacher education. One needs to come to the school, learn by experience, but then one needs to engage in further professional development. Regrettably, that is not available in the Irish context. We have two teachers and members of staff currently going through the postgraduate diploma, but they are doing that in Birmingham, which is not in the Irish context. That is very regrettable. The short answer is no, we need more provision to train teachers of deaf children.