Disability Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-19
============================================================

Ruairí Ó Murchú (SF), Louth

The Minister mentioned the change in the legislation around assessments of need and the Disability Act. We all know the pressure families are under - not being able to get an assessment, the therapies or the necessary early intervention. While we might all support that idea of a single point of access, it needs to work. Assessments of need waiting lists have skyrocketed. I assume they are anywhere between 22,000 and 25,000 at this point and constitute a continuing breach of the law. I can accept the argument that 29% of children are found not to have a disability and the idea that 35% need autism assessments, but the fear relates to who it is that makes the determination about this.
The assessment officer has the correct clinical background, which is a necessity. We need an update on what is going to happen from the Department of Education and Youth's point of view because teachers' unions, teachers and families also need to know how assessments will work in getting an appropriate school place. We need to ensure that we are not once again looking at a second-rate assessment because that is the worry at the minute.

---

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/2026-02-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-19