Brian Allen, director at St Joseph's Services for the Visually Impaired, says extra funding would enable the centre to provide services to more children
St Joseph's seeks through education, training and social care to provide students with the knowledge, skills and confidence to fulfil their individual potential.
St Joseph's is the only school in the State for visually impaired children but it is much more than that.
It is also the only resource centre for the visually impaired in Ireland. As well as a primary and integrated comprehensive secondary school, Pobalscoil Rosmini, we run a pre-school and integrated pre-school.
Through integrated education, students with visual impairments are taught alongside their sighted peers and are provided with every possible opportunity to achieve the highest academic success.
Our resource centre provides occupational therapy, eye clinics as well as speech and language therapy so we can evaluate, diagnose and treat a wide range of issues arising out of visual impairment.
Our vocational training programme offers a progression route to further training, supported employment, independent living or open employment.
The national Braille production centre operates out of St Joseph's. We make all the Braille or large print educational resources in Ireland.
Our family resource centre is very popular and offers training courses for parents and weekend trips away.
St Joseph's also runs a residential facility in the community providing accommodation for children to live with social care staff. It's full at the moment.
We get far more referrals for our various services than we can accommodate.
We do what we can for individuals, but our buildings are no longer suitable. We have been negotiating with the Government since 1999 for funding, but it's been a slow process.
At the moment, about 380 children attend our schools or resource centre but that number is always rising. We could accommodate a lot more if the facilities were there because the demand certainly is.
We receive some Government funding towards education but have to raise €400,000 each year to maintain St Joseph's.
Access to all our services is free and we are always looking for company sponsorship.
We just received confirmation that St Joseph's is to host the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment (ICEVI) conference in 2009.
Held every four years, we wouldn't have been chosen unless our standard of education is rated on a European platform.
St Joseph's operates through team work. Every day is different and presents new challenges. More and more we are dealing with children who have a visual impairment and a secondary disability such as cerebral palsy.
We recognise that every child's needs are different so everyone is individually assessed.
Visually impaired children often come with their parents for a three-day assessment. We then furnish their local school with a report outlining their specific needs.
Every day, I have lunch with the children. All the staff do, St Joseph's is very informal. Everyone calls me Brian and I know all the children and most of their parents.
It's a very laid-back sort of place; we have our own stock of animals and run a pet therapy centre for our pre-schoolers.
I have a fantastically fun job. Anywhere there are kids, there's fun.