Disability Services
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-18
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Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West

I thank the Deputies. Can I be really clear? Last week's announcement was about children with disabilities who require therapies and that is exactly what we are setting out to achieve - the delivery of therapies regardless of children's disability. There is a six-pronged approach here. The heads of Bill have now been published. They will go through pre-legislative scrutiny at the Joint Committee on Disability Matters. We have committed to informing parents earlier about when a decision is arrived at as to whether or not their child has a disability. We have the HSE's new model of having a single point of access which we have discussed and which will be supported by additional recruitment. Between that and the autism assessment process and protocol, which is also a huge part of this, they will be supported by 11 inreach teams next year and 20 inreach teams by the end of the following year. We are also recruiting within our own teams - the CDNTs. We have had a 27% increase in staffing in the 18 months up to April of this year. We have 45,000 children now receiving therapies through our CDNTs and I would like to thank our staff and our clinicians who are delivering those. We are also supplementing our assessment of need process by outsourcing. We will outsource 6,000 of those next year. That frees up therapists to work with children to deliver the therapies they need.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-18