Marie Moloney (Labour)

I thank the Minister, Deputy Quinn, for taking the time to come to the House to deal with this issue. To me, education is a right, not a privilege. It is important to give children the very best possible start in life. When one of these children has a physical disability but a perfect IQ, we need to make a special effort to bring out the best in that child.

The young child to whom I refer today has a perfect IQ for his age but he is non-verbal and communicates mostly with his eyes because this is the most voluntarily controllable part of his body for technological use. A number of low-tech methods are used to enable him to communicate, namely, an icon board and symbols or photos, a Big Mac switch and a step-by-step communicator. While switch technology has been trialled with this child, he does not have the motor control to time his hits and, therefore, using a single switch scanning method for selecting options on a screen would be very difficult and very frustrating for this child from a communication perspective.

Various Eyegaze technological devices have been trialled over the past two years with this young child, and this has proven to be most beneficial in the sense that he can select voluntarily for himself for the first time options on a screen in front of him. This opens huge potential for him in the future for both communication and learning.

This young boy's parents have had to constantly fight for his rights since the day he was born. For example, they applied for a grant to renovate their house and add a special unit for their son. They got the grant from the council but when they went to claim back the VAT, because the occupational therapist had not put it in writing before they applied, they were refused and lost out on approximately €12,000 in VAT.

They then went to put their child into school, only to be told by the school principal that she was not willing to take him and felt he would be too difficult to manage. The classroom teacher also felt that the child could not keep up with the other children, who move very quickly. The parents were in absolute shock and did not know what to do. Luckily, they found a school ten miles away, in a town the Minister will know well, but this means they must now make two 20-mile round trips a day. In addition, because it is not his local school, he cannot get school transport. They are now fighting the Department of Education and Skills for this facility. When the Department refused them, they then went to the HSE but it has refused them. They are totally frustrated with fighting red tape and bureaucracy since the child was born.

It is incumbent on us, as a Government, to ensure this child is helped and that the best is brought out in him. The only way he can communicate is with the assistance of Eyegaze technology. The Ombudsman ruled last week on a very similar case which found in favour of a child who had not received assistive technology and found that the Department should have provided that technology. I am sure the Minister is au fait with the case. Before the parents in this case decide to go down the road of contacting the Ombudsman, I said I would have one more try with the Minister, which is why I am here today. I plead with the Minister to approve this technology for this child. Without it, he is lost.