Sir, - I refer to your report (The Irish Times, August 28th) concerning the leasing of St Joseph's School for Deaf Boys by Dr Desmond Connell, Archbishop of Dublin and patron of the Catholic Institute for the Deaf (CID). As an active member of the deaf community, I am both dismayed and outraged by this action. While I have nothing against the multi-denominational school concerned, it could have been offered a more appropriate location. Unfortunately, the archbishop settled on a deaf school to lease. This is ironic because the Model School for the Deaf Project, a group consisting of deaf people and parents of deaf children, sought a unit on the same campus in 1998 but was turned down by the archbishop.
I am concerned that the Irish deaf community's colourful history is in danger of being blemished. The members of the deaf community had been trying to establish the National Deaf Heritage Centre on the same campus for a number of years.
In addition, the Catholic Hierarchy failed to apologise publicly to the deaf victims of the compulsory oral system of education which prohibited the use of Irish sign language by deaf children in deaf schools since the 1940s. This caused irreparable educational damage to deaf individuals and to our community. They did not apologise to the deaf victims for the unspeakable abuses to the deaf in their institutions under their care, highlighted in the RTE documentary States of Fear. They apologised to the hearing victims, but nothing for the deaf victims.
I therefore call upon Archbishop Desmond Connell as president and principal patron of the Catholic Institute for the Deaf to begin a dialogue with deaf people on the best way forward for the community and to try to understand our needs as well as respecting our culture and language. In addition, the CID should take steps to start handing over its authority to deaf people and allow us to build a better future for our deaf children. - Yours, etc.,
Kevin Stanley, Chairperson, Irish Deaf Society, Blessington Street, Dublin 7.