Disabilities Assessments
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

I hope the Minister of State's voice gets better soon. I know it is difficult when one is in this position with a sore throat. However, I have to say that regardless of the tone in which she is able to deliver it, her answer is incredibly worrying on a number of fronts. First of all, there is now a backtracking. I have a parliamentary question response from the HSE in January where I was given county-specific data. Now, the Minister of State is telling me the HSE does not provide that. Again, there are difficulties in the response with the fact that this Government is breaking the law by failing to provide children with assessments of need they are legally entitled to, within the timeframe they are legally entitled to. Yet, the information the Minister of State is providing in response to that is becoming more limited and restricted. In the first instance, I ask her to get a handle on that. Second, the numbers she has cited from January to now - the most recent figures - suggest to me that there is an increase from 509 children who are waiting for a stage 2 assessment, to over 600. Is that true? Are there more children currently waiting more than a year for assessment of need in Cavan and Monaghan than was the case at the beginning of this year.

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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