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FROM THIS WEEKEND, all children under 12 will be admitted for free to heritage sites managed by the Office of Public Works Heritage Service.
This initiative will commence this Saturday 1 July and will give children under 12 the chance to visit sites for free.
The Office of Public Works (OPW) already offers free entry for children under 6 years of age, and 80,000 school-going children availed of its Free Schools Visits programme last year.
Kevin Boxer Moran, the Minister of State for the Office of Public Works, made the announcement today, saying that he hoped it would “…encourage our children to experience some of the best cultural and heritage sites in the country”.
The Minister added:
“We have some wonderful places to visit like Clonmacnoise, Kilkenny Castle, Newgrange and the Rock of Cashel and I want every child to have an opportunity to visit them with their families during the summer holidays and up to the end of the year.”
The list of sites include the Brú na Bóinne Visitor Centre, Desmond Castle, Glendalough Visitor Centre, Dublin Castle, Sligo Abbey, Roscrea Heritage Centre, and Donegal Castle.
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Basic implants would have a dramatically positive effect for all concerned- I commend Sinn Fein for raising & campaigning on this!
Julie, the minister isn’t putting a age limit on this. We know ourselves the longer it is before the child gets the second implant , the less impact that implant will have. I hope both billy and Liam will get there’s soon, they both deserve it. We won’t give up this fight until they do get it. We are just trying to highlight that these kids need this to happen now, not years down the line
Well said Deanna.
Hi Deanna, I am going by what is in the article about and also press release statements by HNE the above states” Her own son Billy is going to be at five at Christmas, getting nearer to the cut-off age of seven. This shows that there is a cut off age. I had presumed that this is something HNE had discussed with the minister and that there was some ‘criteria’ in place. Up to now I had heard the cut off point being mentioned as 5.
As the mother of a child that was only implanted last year with one implant as he is a misdiagnoses case in Audiology and is now age 6 it was very important that the HNE campaign would get the message across to the Mistier that as a group they would not accept an age limit being put on children who needed a second implant. Research shows that more children will have acquired hearing loss than children born deaf. This means that they will enter the services at a later age, it is vital that the minister do not put an age restriction on which children are editable for the second implant. The minister needs to now announce if Bilateral implant were to go ahead what the criteria would be. My son’s spoken language after wearing the implant one year is that of a hearing child of the same age. However there is a pay back, he uses a huge amount of energy concentrating and he get tired very easily. He, just like the younger age group of children, needs the second implant especially as we are now hoping to move him to mainstream school. I would urge parents of children over 5 to write to the minister demanding to know the criteria. As I also wear an Implant myself I know that implants can be very successful later in life so there is no reason why a child over 5 would not benefit from bilateral implants. A surgeon has no way of saying that a child over 5 would not be successful with a bilateral implant and issuing this information to the media is just misleading.
Also love to look at why some kids with disabilities are not even considered for implants even when they desperately need them. Especially if they were deem suitable in the UK but not in Ireland.
No the taxpayer is not expected to pick up the tab for everything.
Hope you never have a medical condition that you cannot afford to pay for yourself!!
Is the tax payer just expected to pick up the tab for everything in this country???
Would you prefer to give more money to bank share holders? That’s where most of the money went. This is to help children hear. What kind of person would voice a complaint against that?
The kids can hear after one implant, they can hear slightly better with a second one. The state should pay for one and they can have a bleeding raffle or a sponsored run or some shit for the second one.
After being implanted it can take up to six months before a child begins to make sense of the new sounds and start to make progress. A huge danger with having one implant is that if it fails (and they do for a variety of reasons) that child must then have it removed, heal up, be re-implanted and begin a further possible 6month + of relearning to hear before any progress is made on the very long road to learning speach. Is that acceptable? How is a child supposed to cope with that? How are they to continue in education? How far will they be set back? It is scary what is seen as an acceptable standard of living these days. Since gaining control of the country the government have consistently targeted the most vulnerable in our society and that must change. Everything except the air we breath is taxed. We all are taxpayers. I for one would prefer to see our taxes used to help the vulnerable people of Ireland.
I am a tax payer, as is my husband, as is my family. I am sure that my tax goes to support other people in other ways and that is ok. I believe if you have children yourself that they get free dental care, free eye test ect. Well it just so happens through no fault of their own that our children were either born deaf or through genetic conditions, illness such as meningitis, measles, glue ears ect that they lost their hearing. I would not wish the stress on any parents but anybody could find themselves in our boat. Our tax payers money is now paying for universal medical cards for all children under 5 yet you expect our children to go around with one ear! Try it yourself. Block up one ear with cotton wool until it is really blocked up and you cant hear a thing from that ear. Then try and go about your life. Go to work. See what happens if someone talks to you from the ‘wrong side’ try sitting in a big meeting and see how you get on. Try answering the phone with the blocked up ear. Then come back here and tell me that you only need one ear! All of these children in order to meet the criteria will have profound loss, this means they cannot hear the tv with that ear, they cant hear on the phone, they cant hear a radio. Cochlear implants are best effective at a distance of one metre from the speaker. Further than this and information will be missed. Can you imagine a child’s life. They are constantly on the move, people around them are moving. It is a challenge for any child with one implant to hear. I can only hope that you will do as I suggest and become ‘deaf’ for a day and maybe then you wont mind tax payers money being used to pay for cochlear implants. But remember as you get older and older it will be my son and children like him that will be paying taxes to look after you! Will they be as hard cut, I don’t think so, life lessons will teach them that each member of society is valuable and deserves the best chance in life.
Hi David Broderick,
The fear with one implant can also be around the external pieces/ processor breaking. There can also be issues with the battery not working. Not all the children on the Implant programme are living near Beaumont Hospital Dublin many travel in excess of over 4 hours to get there. So if the external processor breaks it may have to be sent away to be fixed, in this time the child is plunged back into a world of silence. Many parents like me know what it is like to get the dreaded orange light on the processor to tell you that it is not working properly and to feel the fear of god go through you. Your child is in a panic, they have no ‘back up,’ they cant hear a sound and now suddenly the implant is not working. Well you ring Beaumont to be told it will be two days or more before they can see you. In this time your child is not hearing. If the child had two implants life would go on until the other one was fixed and the child would not be distressed.
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