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Chime Present to Oireachtas Health Committee

Chime presents to the Oireachtas Health Committee on the urgent need to implement national hearing care plan.

TDs and Senators will today (Feb28) hear how Ireland prescribes hearing aids at approximately half the rate of the UK.
Chime, the national charity for deaf and hard of hearing people, will highlight to the Oireachtas Health Committee an urgent need for the Department of Health to implement a promised national hearing care plan. 

In advance of World Hearing Day on Sunday (March 3) next, it says people are struggling with hearing loss with no support.   The call for a hearing plan is backed by a Dublin-based CEO who used subtitles during Zoom seminars to understand what was being said, before a diagnosis of hearing loss.
Helen Walmsley, aged in her fifties, is head of Voluntary Service International, the Irish branch of an international peace network. She said hearing aids changed her life and urged those who suspect hearing loss to get tested.

She recently got hearing aids from Chime, whose CEO, Mark Byrne, said the proposed plan should “provide a clear pathway as to how people can address hearing loss through cutting waiting lists and making hearing aids more accessible and affordable”.
“We will highlight how over the past five years, Ireland has prescribed hearing aids at approximately half the rate of the UK – ensuring people are struggling with hearing loss with no support.,” he said.

Helen told how she was “fed up” with the frustration, embarrassment and exhaustion of having to look directly at those speaking to her, asking people to repeat themselves numerous times and the negative impact on her social life due to difficulty with background noise.

“But I did not realise other people were not hearing as I did. It was a revelation that I needed hearing aids.  I have mild to moderate hearing loss. I can hear high pitched and low pitched sound, but mid-ranged frequencies, voices and music, is where my hearing loss is.  So I did not know there were all sorts of things I was not hearing properly.  When I put in my hearing aids in the for the first time I could hear a clock ticking in the audiologist’s room I had not heard before and my clothes brushing against a chair.”

“Sounds became richer. I wanted to hear familiar voices, which are more nuanced for me now.  Each sound is now an individual thing, everything sounds better. I did not know the extent of my difficulty until I got hearing aids. Without them, sounds seem muffled now, but this was normality for me before I got them. You do not know what you cannot hear.  Life is much easier now.  Before, I had difficulty holding a proper conversation and would miss a lot of what was being said. It takes getting used, to but hearing aids now are so technologically advanced. Mine come with an app, which I can use to adjust volume, prioritise sound direction and reduce background noise.”