Consultation on the Irish Sign Language Act 2017: Parents and guardians

ISL Act 2017 reporting

The National Disability Authority (NDA) have been asked by the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality to write a report about the operation of the Irish Sign Language (ISL) Act 2017. This is the second report on the operation of the Act; the first report was completed in 2021 and can be found on the NDA website.

The Minister has requested that this report focus on progress “made since the previous report with regards the implementation of the ISL Act”. The NDA will use the findings from the 2021 report as the baseline in determining progress.

The Irish Sign Language Act was introduced in 2017. From December 2020, public bodies have had to support deaf ISL users to access public services and entitlements by providing free interpretation. 

About this Report

As a parent or guardian of a child who is deaf or hard of hearing and who is using or learning ISL, we want to collect views and experiences of your child’s access to public services and entitlements through ISL in the past five years. 

The feedback from this survey will help us understand and report on how well the Act is working for children who are ISL signers or learners. This survey is part of a wider consultation process. 

This questionnaire is specifically designed for parents or guardians of a child who is deaf or hard of hearing and who is an ISL user or learner aged 0-18. We encourage you to complete this questionnaire along with your child, where possible. We will use the term ISL users throughout the survey but this also includes children who are learning ISL.

If you are not a parent or guardian of a child who is deaf or hard of hearing and who is an ISL user there is a separate survey called Consultation on the Irish Sign Language Act 2017 which we invite you to complete. 

Survey Instruction

This survey must be completed and submitted in one go as you cannot save and come back later.

The closing date for responses is the 10 October 2025.

This survey has ISL interpretation for each question. Click on the link under each question to access the ISL interpretation (this will open in a new tab).

Confidentiality and Data Protection

We do not ask you for your personal details in the survey. Any information you provide is anonymous.

Please do not provide any personal information that could identify you or another person in this survey, such as names or addresses.

We will not share any information you provide with anyone else.

If you have any questions about data protection please contact the NDA Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@nda.ie.