Disabilities Assessments
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
============================================================

Robert O'Donoghue (LAB), Dublin Fingal West

The situation regarding waiting times for speech and language therapy in CHO 9, particularly for children in my constituency of Dublin Fingal West, has gone from beyond delay and is entering the territory of systemic neglect. Children in CHO 9 are waiting not months but years for basic speech and language assessments and then face further delays before therapy begins. These children are at the most critical stage of their development, yet the State is, in effect, telling families to wait and hope the damage is not permanent.
CHO 9 has, going back years, repeatedly reported some of the longest waiting times nationwide for disability services, especially for contact and assessment, mainly due to staff training shortages and high demand. I know the Minister of State realises early intervention is not a slogan; it is an evidence-based practice. When speech and language needs are not addressed early, children fall behind societally and emotionally. I am dealing with families whose children are in school and unable to communicate at the same level as their peers, not because their need was not identified but because the public system is failing to act on time.
These delays are actively undermining children's development. They are increasing demand for resources in education, thereby placing additional strain on teachers. I used to work with those teachers and they have vocalised this to me. The delays are also causing enormous distress to parents whose children are missing crucial developmental milestones. The default response to this crisis has been to cite recruitment and retention difficulties, but recruitment and retention cannot be the only answer when children are being left without services year after year.
I would like the Minister of State to answer a couple of questions directly. What is being done to address the unacceptable waiting times in CHO 9 beyond repeating the same recruitment talking points that families have been hearing for years? What concrete mechanisms are in place to train and deploy more speech and language therapists? Are training places in colleges being increased? Are supervised graduate roles being funded?
Families are not waiting for strategy documents or further policies that may not work; they are waiting for services. While the system fails them, parents are being forced into private therapies just to prevent their children from falling behind. That is not a choice; it is desperation. Families are paying hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of euro because the public system cannot meet the demand. Some families have taken out credit union loans to fund therapies for their children.
I would appreciate it if the Minister of State could clarify one point. Are parents who pay for private therapies being taken off the public waiting lists? In other areas of healthcare, when waiting lists spiral out of control, the State intervenes, and the National Treatment Purchase Fund comes to mind. Why are speech and language services for children treated differently? Why can parents not be reimbursed when they are forced to go private due to excessive public waiting times? A similar reimbursement or purchase scheme would immediately relieve pressure on public services and offer families some measure of fairness, while the Minister works on bringing public waiting times under control.
The current approach is effectively outsourcing early intervention to parents’ bank accounts, which is not sustainable. Children in my constituency of Dublin Fingal West and across CHO 9 cannot wait for the system to slowly catch up. I ask the Minister of State to stop managing this process and start resolving it, and to provide clear timelines, meaningful interim supports and a credible plan that delivers services now, not coming up to the next general election.

---

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/2026-01-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-21