Departmental Legal Cases
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central

The Minister of State says the HSE is not contesting these cases, but 1,000 families had to bring cases against the State last year, and the State spent €10.5 million then. What was it spending the money on? Why was that €10.5 million not put into assessments of need? To give the Minister of State figures from Cork, there are supposed to be 14.5 assessment of need posts in Cork; there are only eight. In August, 2,000 assessments of need were overdue. The average waiting time is 27 months. It is supposed to be six months, but children are waiting over two years. No disrespect to the Minister of State, and I do not doubt her sincerity, but I come in here every year raising assessments of need and children who need supports and need this done, and every year I fear what the Government will do. These figures speak for themselves. Children are waiting 27 months for vital assessments. This Government has failed the children of Ireland.

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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/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17