At the outset, I should like to thank you, Sir, for affording me the opportunity of raising this matter in the House. I hope the Minister will be able to respond positively to my queries on behalf of the interested people involved.
I wish to highlight what I consider to be the grossly inadequate level of primary education facilities available in Ireland for children who are deaf, hard of hearing, for children with mental or physical handicap and for emotionally disturbed children.
It is absolutely essential that there be a firm decision taken by the Minister for Education to bring about an improvement in the assessment and the teaching of such children. Certainly it is in the best interests of all children with handicaps to integrate and mix freely with all children and with one another. For that reason, primary education for those children is a must. It may prove more expensive in the short term but, with proper primary education and later post-primary education, all these children will be able to live their lives to their fullest potential.
In my constituency of Laois-Offaly there are about 50 children from birth up to about 18 years who have problems with their hearing. In the past, children from four years of age attended a special residential school for boys and girls at Cabra in Dublin, which looked after hearing-impaired children. I would like to pay tribute to the work of the staff in Cabra. There are also special schools which are mainly non-residential in Cork, Limerick and Dublin.
Children who were attending the special residential school in Cabra normally travelled on a Sunday evening from their homes by bus or train and were collected in Dublin, returning home again on a Friday evening. Those children suffered from deafness, in some cases this was profound, in some severe, some had partial hearing and, in some instances, the deafness occurred as a single disability or combined with other disabilities.
A child who was sent to Cabra, who in many instances could be highly intelligent, was unable to understand why he or she was in fact being sent away from home. Parents could not justify to a child why he or she was being sent away from home. One can only ponder what was in that little child's mind — why it was being sent away from the warmth of its home and being put on a bus on a Sunday evening. I am certain it caused sadness, trauma and worry to both the children and their parents. In many instances, the parents and the child missed the warmth of the family environment.
In the mid-eighties there was a parental demand in the Midlands and in Galway for localised education for such children. I was involved in supporting the parents in the Midlands at the time. The former Minister of State at the Department of Education, Deputy Creed, was very active and supportive as was the Minister for Education, Deputy Hussey, in the provision of such special classes in Geashill, County Offaly and in Claddagh, County Galway. They have since been provided in a number of other centres.
The position is that a hearing-impaired child goes to the local national school and is visited by qualified visiting teachers who give support teaching. The visiting teacher's job consists of visiting the children and their parents in their home. They also advise, counsel and teach the children, support the teachers in the national schools and liaise with the health boards, the Department of Education, the National Rehabilitation Board and other interested parties. These visiting teachers are involved both with preschool and school-going children.
I fully support the demand by parents of children with other handicaps and disabilities, such as mental handicap or physical disability, who are demanding the services of a visiting teacher to provide a service of a similar nature to that of the hearing-impaired child. These parents are demanding that there be localised education provided through the schools in their areas or alternatively through special centralised classes locally.
At present in Ireland we have 27 visiting teachers of hearing-impaired children and three teachers for children of impaired vision, a total of 30, whereas nationwide there are approximately 2,000 severely and profoundly handicapped children. The Minister is proposing to provide an additional six teachers bringing the total of visiting teachers to 36 but is demanding that the teachers service all handicapped children. The 30 teachers now available are barely coping with the existing demands of children with impaired hearing and impaired vision. An enormous burden will be placed on these teachers because of the expansion of numbers under the new scheme. The number of teachers will have to be increased in order to provide an adequate service to cover all the children who are deaf, blind, emotionally disturbed, physically or mentally handicapped. I welcome the decision to expand the service to other handicapped children and I further welcome the integration of children with handicaps in education. However, a consequent expansion in the number of teachers to maintain an adequate pupil-teacher ratio is essential to prevent a dilution of the services which would render the system less effective.
The Minister is trying to provide a solution on the cheap to what is a very serious problem. The children we are trying to help will suffer in the long run if the number of teachers is not increased. The Minister in effect is trying to ensure that six new teachers will cope with all the additional handicapped children being brought into the system. I believe the Minister will have to re-assess the situation to ensure that children with mental or physical handicaps are adequately catered for. He must ensure that the existing services are not rendered ineffective.
I appeal to the Minister to clarify the situation and explain exactly what services the six additional teachers are expected to cover.