Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind is 30 years old this year, and has just published a book on the organisation and its people. Fiona Tyrrelllooks at what it does
For 165 visually impaired and blind people in Ireland owning a guide dog means personal freedom, greater self-esteem and a chance to "be involved in their own destiny", according to one guide dog owner.
Now in its 30th year, the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind (IGDB) hopes to increase the number of guide dog owners from 165 to at least 400 over the coming years.
"You can be as educated as Albert Einstein but unless you have the ability to get from A to B a lot of that education can be lost," says Tom Langan, who has been a guide dog owner since 1978.
Earlier this year, the Galwegian underwent a three-week training session with Trigger, his fifth guide dog, at the IGDB headquarters in Cork.
"Owning a guide dog means you are able to move with ease and speed through busy cities and towns. You get a very gentle and generous friend. A guide dog also means greater interaction, sometimes too much, with the public."
Aside from a massive boost to your personal independence, owning a guide dog can do wonders for self-esteem, according to Langan. Research has shown that owning a guide dog increases the self-esteem and confidence of blind and visually impaired people tenfold.
In the past 30 years the IGDB has actively encouraged blind and visually impaired people to "be involved in their own destiny", according to Langan. The organisation has also played a huge role in changing attitudes towards visually impaired and blind people, he says.
"In the 1950s and 1960s, and well into the 1970s, the outlook for blind people was, if you'll excuse the pun, a bit dim. Education was almost at a minimum for blind and visually impaired people and in lots of situations there was none at all."
Right up to the 1970s it was not possible for visually impaired or blind people to sit their Inter and Leaving Certificates, and the common image of a blind person was of "a poor blind person with a cap in their hand", he says.
Back then, visually impaired or blind people had only two options. They could work in sheltered employment or work as a telephonist, a position Langan holds with the Health Service Executive Western Area.
Now the IGDB counts accountants, barristers, IT managers, computer programmers and interpreters among its clients.
The IGDB was formed in 1976 mainly through the efforts of Jim Dennehy, who was one of the first people in Ireland to own a guide dog, and Mary Dunlop, who was a fundraiser for the British Guide Dogs Association in Ireland.
The organisation now offers mobility training through the use of guide dogs and long canes for adults and children from four years of age. The services, which are provided free, bring mobility and independence to the lives of blind and visually impaired people all over Ireland.
The cost to the organisation for each guide dog partnership is €35,000 over its lifetime. More than 80 per cent of income comes from voluntary funding and the remainder from Government, explains Charlie Daly, IGDB chairman.
Some blind people are reluctant to consider a guide dog because of lack of information about how the system works; others hold on to an old-fashioned idea of a guide dog as being "ridiculous", according to Daly. Sometimes it just doesn't work - people just don't like dogs or don't have an ability to gel with a dog. There might also be a physical reason why a dog wouldn't suit an individual, he explains.
The training of guide dogs is very labour-intensive; at any one time the organisation is training 300 dogs. It takes three years to breed and train a guide dog and there is a rejection rate of 40 per cent, he says. Reject dogs were once re-housed as family pets. But now the association places them as companion dogs with people with special needs or places them in nursing homes and other residential facilities, Daly explains.
The organisation employs more than 40 people based at its headquarters in Cork and two regional offices in Galway and Dublin. This year it will provide training programmes for over 90 people, as well as after-care services to over 300 existing clients.
Last year the IGDB commenced an independent living skills programme which aims to improve skills and confidence in areas such as food preparation, cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping and household management.
This type of training is particularly ideal for pre-university preparation for young people considering living away from home for the first time. An information technology suite at the organisation's national headquarters has personal computers which are adapted for use by the blind and visually impaired. They also have braille embossers.
The notion of blindness as a "barrier to living your full potential" has been seriously challenged in the past two decades in Ireland, according to Langan, and education has been the major catalyst in this change.
Despite the huge advances made in education, unemployment among blind and visually impaired people is still very high. "Once blind and visually impaired people have the ability to be mobile, which should be a basic right, the next basic right is the opportunity to participate in employment," he says.
Last year, IGDB began a pilot project to provide assistance dogs to families of children with autism. Three families commenced training with an assistance dog in January and five more started in June.
The book, Independence, celebrates Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind and has just been published by Mercier Press. Containing a large number of photographs and detail about those involved in IGDB, it is available from bookshops at €40 or online from www.guidedogs.ie. It is also available in Braille and audio formats.