Disability Issues
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-03
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Mary Lou McDonald (SF), Dublin Central

Holy Family School for the Deaf in Cabra is a centre of excellence for deaf education and is in fact the only campus in Ireland catering for deaf pupils from the ages of three to 18 years. This is education for deaf children and young people in the deaf community. It is a special school, providing a very specialised service. It is a wonderful school and they need in-house Irish sign language, ISL, interpreters on staff. I met them yesterday and they recounted to me how they have to hire in interpretation services for the most mundane, the most complex and sometimes the most sensitive of tasks. They also explained how bringing in interpreters piecemeal like that does not work for children, especially small ones, because there has to be a relationship of trust and understanding and so on. They need two of these interpreters in-house. They cannot get clarity from the Department. Will the Taoiseach intervene for goodness' sake? This school needs this service, as I imagine another deaf school in Limerick does.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-03/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-03