Psychological Assessments Dail Éireann — 2025-12-18 ============================================================ Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West Before I deal with the Topical Issue, I wish a merry Christmas to Deputy O'Reilly and her family, as well as to the Ceann Comhairle, her team and everybody who keeps this place running day in and day out. I hope they all enjoy the break. I thank Deputy O’Reilly for raising this issue and for offering me the opportunity to speak about it on the floor of the House. The Government recognises that there are unacceptable delays in accessing assessments of need, not just in the Deputy's constituency, but at a national level also. The Department and the HSE are committed to addressing these delays and ensuring that the assessment of need system is more efficient and effective. There has been a continued growth in demand for assessments of need in the north Dublin local health office, which spans a significant area within Dublin Fingal West. In the first nine months of this year, 808 applications were received compared with 655 in the same period last year. This marks a 23% year-on-year increase in demand for assessments of need in the north Dublin local health office area. Nationally, demand for assessments of need has doubled in five years. Significant efforts have been made to increase the completion rates of assessments of need throughout the country, including the north Dublin local health office area. This is reflected in the Deputy's constituency in the completion of 770 assessment reports in the first nine months of this year, a 58% year-on-year increase when compared with the same period last year. These efforts have had a positive effect in reducing the number of applications that were overdue for completion in north Dublin by almost 3% in the last year but obviously there is a long way to go on this. At the end of September, there were 1,841 applications overdue for completion in north Dublin compared with 1,893 at the same time last year. While there is a positive trend evident, I entirely accept that we need to do a lot more, not just in the Deputy's constituency, but at a national level, to ensure that assessments of need are completed as soon as possible. This is why the Government announced on 9 December a series of reforms to the assessment of need process that will make the process more effective and efficient for children and families. These reforms include changes to Part 2 of the Disability Act 2005, which provides for assessments of need. These changes will not remove any rights for parents to apply for an assessment of need for their child, nor will they alter the statutory six-month timeline set out in the Disability Act. In addition to these legislative reforms, there are a series of operational actions that are being progressed as a matter of priority. These include the development of statutory guidelines to ensure that assessments of need focus on identifying a child’s needs, engaging in more intensive assessments only where required to identify need. This should help reduce delays and allow therapists to spend more time delivering services. The HSE will establish 11 new in-reach teams, initially, to support HSE assessment processes, including assessments of need and also the HSE's new specific autism protocol and assessment process. Each team will include a psychologist, a speech and language therapist, an occupational therapist and an administrator, providing clinical guidance throughout the process. The administrator is being provided for that team on foot of feedback we are receiving from families that they feel they need and deserve better communication from our teams. The Government recognises the need for urgency in addressing delays in the assessment of need system and that is why we announced these reforms last week to be brought in in the coming months. We are absolutely committed to addressing these for the benefit of children and their families. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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