Kiltimagh family feature in RTÉ television documentary

A family from Kiltimagh is to feature in a new television documentary that will air on RTÉ this week.

Deaf Not Dumb explores the challenges of deaf education in Ireland and will air on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player on Thursday next, November 23, at 10.15pm.

The documentary explores the challenges of deaf education in Ireland and highlights the historical issues that have prevented deaf people from reaching their full academic potential. Today, parents still have to fight to ensure that their deaf children have equal access to education using Irish Sign Language (ISL).

Eoghan Freeman, who celebrated his ninth birthday last Saturday, is a bubbly bright deaf boy from Kiltimagh. He was born deaf, and his mother Orla explains that he was the first deaf person she ever met. Orla and her husband Shane have fought for years to ensure that Eoghan has access to the same education enjoyed by his older hearing brothers.

“It’s a diagnosis we weren’t expecting because we don’t have anyone who is deaf in our family. When Eoghan was six weeks old we got his official diagnosis that he was profoundly deaf. It’s been a journey learning Eoghan’s deafness,” Orla told the Western People. “He got cochlear implants when he was 12 months old and these are like hearing devices that help children hear, but Eoghan was born with an under-development in his auditory nerve and his cochlea, so a cochlear implant was never going to give him full benefit. So, we started to learn sign language with Eoghan at a very early age.”

Eoghan is in second class at St Aidan’s National School in Kiltimagh, where he has a full-time ISL classroom support teacher who works alongside him. Tara McNally, Castlebar, has been working with Eoghan since he was 12 months old under the ISL Home Tuition Scheme, which the Department of Education offers to families whose children have hearing loss.

“She worked with him through preschool but when he got to the school stage, it was a bit of a fight to get support for Eoghan because it’s not a common thing for many children to use sign language as their main form of communication nowadays with the success of cochlear implants,” Orla said. “At the time, there was no role established for children like Eoghan in mainstream schools that would need ISL support, but then Tara started school with him under the SNA scheme.

“But it wasn’t fit for purpose because Tara would be a graduate of Trinity College Dublin with a degree in Deaf Studies. She would have been going in on the SNA pay scale, and for somebody with her qualifications that wasn’t good enough. Through lobbying with parents throughout the country and support from the Irish Deaf Society and different groups, eventually a role was announced.”

Orla says it is lovely see all of Eoghan’s classmates learning ISL to communicate with him. Out in the yard, he is included in the games and at GAA training on the local pitch. Eoghan is growing up surrounded by family and friends in an incredibly supportive community.

Tune in to RTÉ One on Thursday next at 10.15pm to watch Deaf Not Dumb.