Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

This is a fairly straightforward matter for the Minister of State to address. It involves the fundamental rights of approximately 2,500 deaf parents of hearing children who are currently denied automatic rights in terms of being able to sign with teachers and principals in the primary and post-primary school system. This is not a new issue. This matter has been on desks in the Department of Education and Science for five or six years. The society that represents these parents wants this issue to be resolved finally.

If the Minister was a parent and his child was in school, one of the most basic rights that he would have is to speak, on a regular or six-monthly basis, with a principal or teacher. That right is currently denied to the 2,500 deaf parents of hearing children here. Those parents face particular difficulties as a result. I am aware of cases where some schools refuse to provide Irish sign language interpreters for parents to access meetings that take place in the school. Some deaf parents are forced to pay for their own interpreters before a meeting with a teacher or principal. Many deaf parents are afraid to tackle schools over interpreters and are understandably embarrassed by such requests. Some parents are forced to use written communication with teachers even though they have literacy problems.

This situation has gone on for five or six years. The former Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey, said in 2002 that this issue could be resolved by the Disability Bill, in terms of putting in place a national interpreter system for deaf people. However, nothing happened because the Bill was only enacted in the latter days of the last Dáil. In recent times, in correspondence between the Irish Deaf Society and the Department, the view of the Department is that schools have capitation budgets they should use if they want to provide this facility.

I ask the Minister of State, in the first instance, to immediately issue a circular to all primary and post-primary schools demanding that the 2,500 deaf parents of hearing children are afforded some respect and decency in our school system and informing them that principals and teachers have an absolute obligation to ensure those parents are given information. Second, I ask him to give a commitment to the House to provide funding for these schools where parents are in this situation. Such parents find themselves in a very difficult position, where their children are communicating, can hear and are part and parcel of society but the parents are embarrassed by their situation. The Irish State, PLC, for the past five years, has given them bureaucratic reasons they do not have the right to sign in the context of the primary and post-primary sector.

I ask the Minister of State, who is a compassionate man and a person of commonsense, to deal with this issue now and desist from reiterating the kind of nonsense we have heard from the Department of Education and Science in Marlborough Street for the past five years.

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