Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My Department, directly and through the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, provides a range of supports in schools for children who are deaf or hard of hearing. This includes additional teachers, specialist equipment and access to SNA support, depending on the child's level of assessed needs.

In Ireland, we have two established schools for the deaf. They are Holy Family School for the Deaf in Dublin and the Midwest School for the Deaf, dedicated to approximately 170 deaf or hard-of-hearing students and catering for children nationwide. Additionally, in the 2023-24 school year there were 25 special classes for deaf or hard-of-hearing children across 14 mainstream schools.

My Department provides funding to the NCSE for supports including 32 visiting teachers in the visiting teacher service. The ISL tuition scheme is available to deaf or hard-of-hearing children from diagnosis to leaving post-primary school. The total funding provided to the ISL tuition scheme in 2023 was €285,000 and 185 children and their families were supported by approximately 75 tutors in the 2023-24 school year. Under my Department’s assistive technology scheme, over 600 children benefited from specialised equipment for the visually and hearing-impaired last year.

There is also a long-standing provision to support children in mainstream settings where ISL is their primary language. The Department sanctions an additional SNA to schools, above their existing allocation, where a school is required to employ an individual with ISL proficiency to provide support. In March 2022, a new scheme for the provision of ISL in-school support for students who are deaf and whose primary means of communication is ISL was announced. Two new posts have been created, an ISL specialist classroom support and an ISL adviser for the deaf or hard of hearing. A recruitment campaign is under way for those additional posts.

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