Signing case to be taken against State

The High Court has granted leave for a case to be brought aimed at compelling the State to provide for a young deaf and mute girl to be taught through the medium of Irish sign language, described as "the natural sign language of deaf people in Ireland".

All Anna Moran Dunne (11) required was one teacher and one assistant to be fluent in sign language to maximise her educational abilities and learn as much of the curriculum as possible, Anna's mother, Lucy Moran, a Montessori teacher, said in an affidavit.

It was neither reasonable nor practicable to expect Anna to learn through the spoken word or by lip-reading, Ms Moran said.

In addition to being taught through sign language, Anna also needed to be taught English through the written medium as "her second language", as she would have to live "in the English-speaking world" and could not survive independently communicating exclusively within a deaf community.

Anna now is equivalent to "normal" children in mainstream school being presented with the curriculum through Chinese while wearing earmuffs, Ms Moran said. She could not understand either signed, written or spoken English.

She communicated with Anna at home using sign language but for years she had no way of communicating with her. The family had all learned a little sign language and she trained to become a sign language interpreter.

However, Ms Moran said, Anna was consistently denied sign language from the Department of Education in her formative years.

"Officialdom" appeared totally unaware of research indicating the limitations of the Total Communications method in vogue in schools for the deaf.

If Anna was "normal" and attending a Gaelscoil, she would have a teacher who taught through Irish, not through Irish and English at the same time. It was not possible to teach while speaking and signing simultaneously as was done through the Total Communication method.

Mr Justice Michael Peart yesterday granted leave to John O'Hanlon, for Anna, Raheny, Dublin, and suing by her mother, to bring judicial review proceedings seeking an order that the Minister for Education and Science and the State provide appropriate educational and support services suitable to Anna's needs.

In her affidavit, Ms Moran said her daughter suffered from a rare genetic condition, Ohdo blepharophimosis syndrome, characterised by eye problems requiring surgery, delayed development and growth, deafness and poorly developed teeth.

Expert reports had from 1998 suggested the use of signing and/ or sign language and had stated that mixed mode teaching - signing and speaking at the same time - would have limited language impact and would also have a negative impact on behaviour, producing frustration, reduced attention and potentially further disruption. This was what had happened in Anna's case.

Ms Moran said when she sought to enrol Anna in a school for deaf girls in Dublin, she was told Anna could not have a deaf signing assistant using sign language because she would be in an oral class with emphasis on speech.

A school for deaf boys was willing to take Anna and to provide a signing assistant with sign language. She spent three years at the boys school where her teacher had no formal qualification in sign language. In her third year, her teacher had no sign skills at all. She then went to a school for deaf girls where the teachers were not fluent signers.

While there had been some improvements, it remained clear that Anna needed access to the curriculum through sign language, not English which she could not hear, Ms Moran said.