Sir, – It is regrettable that Jonathan O'Brien did not extend his two minutes silence during the Dáil debate on bilateral cochlear implants to cover the full period of his speaking time (Home News, October 18th).
His contribution to the debate (as reported by your reporter), and his patronising gesture, gives a most misleading impression of how the majority of deaf people experience the consequences of profound deafness.
If Mr O’Brien and his colleagues had engaged with deaf people prior to the Dáil debate, he would have discovered that a “lifetime of silence” has not prevented many thousands of deaf people making a valuable and productive contribution to Irish society. He would also have learned that a “lifetime of silence” does not result in a lifetime without language.
Cochlear implants do not provide a “cure” for deafness. They do enable certain deaf children to gain an improved facility in the use of a spoken language, but they do not grant fluency in a spoken language to all deaf children. If all deaf children are to be enabled to fulfil their potential, the provision of cochlear implants should be seen as one component within a bilingual approach to the education of deaf children that equally values and promotes the use of Irish Sign Language (ISL), the visual language of the deaf community in Ireland.
Deaf children, if granted access to users of ISL, can acquire this language naturally in the same way, and at the same age, as hearing children acquire a spoken language. It can then be used, in conjunction with body-worn hearing aids or cochlear implants, to facilitate the learning of a spoken language in both its written and spoken forms.
Government and opposition parties need to base their policies in relation to deaf children on deaf children’s capabilities, and not simply on their inability to hear.
At Gallaudet University in the United States, research has identified how deaf people perform better on certain tests than hearing people, giving rise to the concept of “deaf gain” – the advantage that arises from being deaf.
The Department of Health is not the appropriate department to lead on government provision for deaf children. It would be in the interests of deaf children, and presumably the currently overburdened Dr James Reilly, if this responsibility was passed to his Cabinet colleagues responsible for education and culture. Deaf children are not sick, and if they are to develop their full potential should not be defined as simply hearing children who cannot hear. – Yours, etc,
DAVID O’BRIEN,
Currabeg,
Skibbereen,
Co Cork.