Health Services Waiting Lists
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-30
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Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West

Absolutely. Not only can we do better, we must do better in this area. This is maybe an opportunity to reference and thank the Committee on Disability Matters for its assistance in pre-legislative scrutiny of new reforms that we will introduce from an assessments of need perspective. On top of this, we are also recruiting for therapists to ensure we have enough people to be able to deliver the care that children like Eva, James and Ger's son require.
This past year, we have seen a reduction in wait lists at our children's disability network teams, CDNTs. They reduced quite substantially last year and our aim is to reduce them again this year, while also dealing with the backlog of children who are waiting on assessments of need. The autism protocol is complementary to that and that is a specific pathway for children who may require an autism diagnosis. Some 40% of children who come through an assessment of need are being diagnosed as autistic. This is about responding to that, making sure there are multiple pathways for all of the challenges that are out there and to ensure we can deliver to children who need therapies and assessments in a more timely fashion.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-30