Disabilities Assessments
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

The Minister for Health has asked me to thank the Deputy for raising this matter and for the opportunity to update the Dáil on this important issue. She is acutely aware of the role that primary care services, such as speech and language therapy, have in offering the opportunity for early and cost-effective interventions for children and young people. Nobody will disagree with the Deputy’s point that early intervention is key. There is nothing more worrying or frustrating for parents when their child needs an intervention than that the child is on a waiting list. I accept and acknowledge that. We all have issues about that in our own constituencies. The Minister fully acknowledges that waiting lists for primary care therapies have increased significantly over recent years. The waiting lists are too long, with too many people, especially children, waiting a very long time to access services. We know we need to address this.
The HSE has advised that the increased pressure and demand on primary care therapy services are related to an increase in referrals, the increasing complexity of presentations, leading to longer interventions, and challenges related to recruitment and retention of healthcare professionals in the community. These factors have all contributed to an increase in waiting lists for services across the country.
I will now respond to the Deputy’s specific questions. In the integrated healthcare area, IHA, for north county Dublin, the HSE has advised that there is an ongoing focus on recruitment to fill the vacancies in this speech and language therapy service. In this area, the HSE has undertaken a number of measures to address the long waiting times for SLT services, working to improve access, ensure appropriate prioritisation and provide ongoing support to families awaiting direct intervention. Such measures include monthly advice clinics that are available to all children and families in the community. These clinics provide an opportunity for families to receive guidance, resources and early support while awaiting an SLT assessment. Additionally, the HSE is running overtime clinics across the area to target children with the longest waiting times.
The HSE has also advised that a prioritisation tool is being utilised to identify children with the highest levels of need, that is, to triage the children to enable the most appropriate response. Furthermore, the HSE is delivering a project for those aged under three years in the north Dublin IHA, which specifically targets younger children and facilitates early intervention, with shorter waiting times.
Notwithstanding that good work, the Minister acknowledges that a lot more needs to be done to improve timely access to services. To address the long waiting times at a national level, the Department of Health is currently working with the HSE on a focused programmatic approach to primary care therapy waiting list management. I have spoken at length with the CEO of the HSE, Bernard Gloster, and the Minister in relation to this issue. I welcome this dedicated focus on a programmatic approach to primary care therapy waiting list management, given that the waiting lists are extremely long. As part of that work programme, the Minister has asked the HSE to reduce the waiting times for three therapies to less than ten months by the end of this year. The three therapies targeted are speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. This initiative will remove over 60,000 people, including children, from the waiting lists and will be a huge improvement on the current position, which is that approximately one third of people on primary care waiting lists are waiting over a year for a service.

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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