Statement by Irish Deaf Society
on its submission to the
UN Convention on Children’s Rights (CRC).
The Chairperson and Board of Directors are satisfied that our submission before the panel is questioning the Irish government under the aegis of the United Nations’ Convention on Children’s Rights. We are only satisfied that questions had been asked to the Irish government – we are neither satisfied nor surprised at the response. Just be having these questions asked should be regarded as a success and we look forward to the final report containing their response to our submission sometime in the next month.
We are really grateful to Andrew Geary, a parent of Deaf child from Cork, for representing us at the hearing at short notice. We have received his summary on the hearing and will look into it and the final report to learn how we can improve our future submissions.
We are very grateful for the assistance from the Children’s Rights Alliance (CRA). We were fortunate to be allowed to prepare our submission at very short notice before Christmas – we thank the CRA for giving us the opportunity to do so.
Finally, we are fully committed to ensuring the human rights of Deaf children and adults by having full access to Irish Sign Language (ISL). Full access to ISL allows a Deaf person to articulate and express their views clearly and enables complete participation in society. We will relentlessly pursue any international treaty that we feel will benefit the status of ISL.
Our aim is to have ISL recognised as an official language by the Irish Government.
END
Contact: info@www.irishdeafsociety.ie
Irish Deaf Society: 01 860 1878
Website: www.deaf.ie
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