REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE CORK DEAF CENTRE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE CORK DEAF CENTRE FRIDAY, 25 JANUARY, 2002
Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur láthair ar an ocáid seo, chun na foirgnimh agus acmhainní nua a oscailte go hoifigiúil. Tá me buíoch dibh as an cuireadh agus an fáilte fíorchaoin a chur sibh romham.
I want to thank you all for the very warm welcome you have given me today. My very special thanks to Barry Murphy for the invitation to officially open this Centre for the Cork Deaf Community.
I know that in a way, what we are celebrating is not a birth, but a re-birth, because of course this centre has provided an extensive range of invaluable services to the community it serves so well since the early 1970s. Like any of us after thirty years, the building needed a bit of a make-over and today we see the fruits of your labour, this wonderfully refurbished facility - the result of much hard work and effort and determination by a group of very committed people – committed to a common aim, to provide a top-standard resource for the deaf community in this city and county.
It wasn’t an easy endeavour, there were many challenges and a few hurdles along the way not least the funding (€500,000) needed, but the Cork Association for the Deaf were not deterred and we are very grateful to you for your vision and relentless pursuit of this very worthwhile objective which will benefit many many people for many years to come. We are also very grateful to the Southern Health Board, the Ireland Fund, People in Need, the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs and of course the many friends of the Centre who contributed very generously to the project. As we can see your hard working partnership has paid off and a wonderful result has been achieved. I am sure there was great joy and celebration and maybe even a sigh of relief when the last nail was hammered home and the building opened in October.
You have every right to celebrate your achievement. This Centre now boasts some of the best facilities in Ireland, providing life-enriching, life-enhancing and very necessary services for the men, women, boys and girls for whom deafness and hearing problems impact dramatically on their enjoyment of everyday life. I congratulate and commend the staff of this centre in a special way, not just for the great work they do day in, day out but for the way they do it, transforming this place of bricks and mortar into a place of welcome and reassurance.
My own family experience of growing up in a home with a profoundly deaf brother has given me some little insight into the many difficulties our deaf friends and family members face in their daily lives, difficulties that the hearing community is often oblivious to. My experience though is that of an observer, a spectator and not the authentic lived experience of a deaf boy or girl and it is the voice of that lived experience we all of us need to hear and respond to. The ability to communicate is at the very centre of our being and something we take very much for granted. Deafness or hearing impairment, strikes at the heart of this process of communicating and can all to often have the effect of cutting people off from the so-called hearing world, that place which generally makes the best provision possible for those who are hearing, seeing and who have full mobility but which has to be reminded time and again that their easy world is a nightmare for those with many forms of disability.
My own brother John, who is profoundly deaf, used to tug on my elbow while the rest of us chatted away, he had to remind us – I am here too! It is not always obvious that someone is deaf so the deaf are easily forgotten. Even when they are seen speaking sign language or talking with a voice that can sound a little strange, old prejudices can stir, old and outrageous associations can be made between deafness and poor intellectual ability. Many older deaf people have stories to tell of awful loneliness, frustration and isolation as their own genius and ability was wasted by systems which let them down.
Much has changed in recent years thank God and at last we see courageous young deaf excelling in education, growing ambitious and succeeding in bringing about many changes in social attitudes to deafness. We will all benefit as a society when the genius, talent and imagination of every deaf person is unlocked and helped to fully blossom.
That is why this Centre is hugely important. It provides a mix of services advice and support which will widen the opportunities for our deaf citizens, increase their confidence as individuals and as a group and help the greater community to sharpen its communication skills to meet the deaf at least half way. Sign language and interpretation classes are available and so too is valuable information and technical aids and equipment. It is essential to have a culturally sensitive place to come to, in which the users and their needs are not seen as unusual, where people understand their concerns, where they can share stories, build friendships, grow in self-assurance. The Centre’s work in raising awareness of those needs within the wider community – and in ensuring that deaf people have a real say in the decisions that affect them – brings us one step closer to a truly inclusive society, in which difference is approached not in fear, but with a joyful sense of curiosity towards the wonderful gifts which deaf people have to offer all of us, if we are only willing to help create effective and equal opportunity.
We still have some way to go before that fully inclusive equal opportunity society is real but we are lucky to be living through times of much greater possibilities and much greater wisdom. New technologies from the computer to the mobile phone are improving life for deaf people enormously and with facilities like this getting more sophisticated all the time, the future looks like a place worth getting to as quickly as possible.
I commend each and every one of you who embarked on the journey to bring this important project to fruition, through relentless and sustained hard work, determination and commitment. You deserve our sincere thanks for a job well done. May your work and faith be vindicated by the many people whose lives will be enhanced and changed for the better because of what you have created here. It gives me great pleasure to declare the Centre officially open.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh agus guím rath Dé air sa todhchai. Go raibh maith agaibh.