Imagine struggling to hear your kid laugh or your parent’s voice? Arlene Harris meets families who’ve just been given the gift of hearing

RTÉ has been criticised for its decision not to provide a sign language option for tonight’s Eurovision Song Contest final.

Irish broadcasters may be invited to learn about subtitling live events such as news programmes from their UK counterparts following complaints from viewers who are deaf and hard of hearing.

Some 23 disability and health agencies are to have their state funding restored, for at least a year, following a climb-down by the Government on the controversial cuts which would have resulted in many vital services shutting their doors.

Environment Minister Alan Kelly has been urged to make an "immediate statement" on how he intends to address the problems faced by 26 voluntary disability and health groups who have lost their state funding.

Twenty-six voluntary bodies in the health and disability sector are in jeopardy in a debacle over funding.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has been asked to intervene to save 26 voluntary organisations in the health and disability sector after it emerged their funding was halted by former Environment Minister Phil Hogan without consulting his colleague with responsibility in the area.

A row has broken out between a Fianna Fáil senator and the Ceann Comhairle over the supply of an interpreter to a group of deaf people, due to travel to the Oireachtas for a debate on cuts to services.

Cuts to disability charities of €1.2m in funding must be urgently reversed, the Taoiseach has been told.

The Irish Deaf Society says the Dáil will not provide an Irish Sign Language (ISL) interpreter when they attend the public gallery in the Dáil to watch Leader's Questions.

I refer to a recent decision by Phil Hogan, Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, to cease providing funding for the National Advocacy Service for Deaf People under the aegis of the Irish Deaf Society. The decision is short-sighted and defies logic.

To paraphrase a well-known commercial, ‘every little hurts’.

The Government has scrapped funding for an advocacy service provided to thousands of deaf people.

Following the ‘fake interpreter’ debacle at the memorial event for Nelson Mandela in South Africa, two general observations can be made in relation to Ireland.

A leading Irish deaf group has warned Government cutbacks mean it must rely on charitable donations and the bequeathed wills of supporters in order to keep its services running.

A Skype-like system is helping deaf people to communicate more easily. Jonathan deBurca Butler reports

A deaf-blind music teacher has won national recognition for developing a unique method of teaching music to deaf children.

Veteran broadcaster Gay Byrne has revealed that he is losing his hearing and is likely to go deaf.

AT least 2,000 people converged on city centre Dublin, demanding cutbacks to disability services be reversed and the state stops treating those using the services as “second class citizens”.

ONE in 10 30-year-olds will be unable to hear without the help of a hearing aid within the next decade as a direct result of listening to their MP3 players too loudly.

COMMUNITIES should play a greater role in designing and delivering healthcare services, the Combat Poverty Agency said yesterday.

The deaf community in Ireland is urging the government to recognise sign language as Ireland's third official language.

INCREASING numbers of deaf children are being denied proper schooling, while the Department of Education withholds a report commissioned to ease their plight.

The Government established the Advisory Committee on the Education of the Deaf in 2002, but this was another case of the old story of setting up a committee to deal with problems and then ignoring its findings.

New rules are being drawn up to ensure people with hearing or vision problems have easy access to radio and TV programmes.

DEAF people are being frustrated by the lack of subtitling on Irish television channels.

A DEAF people’s group has harshly criticised the organisers of the Special Olympics for not doing enough to cater for their needs in the opening ceremony.