Disability (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Maurice Quinlivan (SF), Limerick City For years, disabled children and their families have been failed by successive Governments. They have been promised rights, supports and services, but too often those promises have not been delivered. Families have been left waiting for assessments, therapies, school supports and basic services. They have been forced to fight the State for what should already be available to them as a matter of law and dignity. This is not a new failure. Governments have published strategies, made announcements and offered warm words, but families cannot raise their children on warm words. While Governments make announcements, children are waiting. While Ministers make promises, parents are fighting for assessments. While the State is legally required to provide an assessment of need within six months, the HSE said earlier this year that 21,782 children were overdue for an assessment, and there are more than that on the list itself. Behind every number is a child waiting for answers, a parent trying to understand what their child needs, and a family trying to access therapies and educational supports. These are not statistics. These are children and families who have been failed by the State. I have rightly highlighted this failure before, including the fact that the children in Limerick are waiting beyond the statutory timeline. The Government has been in daily breach of its own laws. This is the reality we are dealing with. Families cannot wait years for an assessment that the law says should be completed within six months. We all agree that the assessment of need process needs to reform, but reform must not mean reducing the right. It must mean making that right real, enforceable and deliverable. The Disability Act 2005, read together with the 2007 regulations, provides a framework in which an assessment must commence within three months and must be completed within a further three months, subject to limited exceptional circumstances. The six-month timeframe must be protected. If the Government tells us the proposed legislation does not remove the six-month statutory timeframe, which I think the Minister is saying, I welcome that commitment. We need an ironclad commitment and we need to have protection made absolutely clear in legislation. Six months must remain six months or sooner. We should be working to complete assessments within six months or sooner. The timeframe must not be an aspiration but an enforceable legal obligation. It must not be restarted because an assessment moves from one stage to another. It must not be extended indefinitely because the State has failed to provide the staff and expertise needed to deliver the service. The proposed legislation introduces a significant change in the structures of the assessment of needs process. The existing framework is intended to provide a comprehensive assessment of the nature and extent of a child's disability, the child's health and educational needs, the service required and the timeframe in which these services should ideally be provided. Under the proposed legislation, greater emphasis is placed on an initial determination of whether a person has a disability before the assessment process of his or her detailed health and educational needs. That is a significant change. We must streamline the process without narrowing the entitlement. We must make the system work better without making the rights smaller. That brings me to the role of the assessment officer. Under the proposed reforms, an assessment officer may determine whether a child has a disability before the full consideration of his or her health and educational needs proceeds. This is a significant responsibility to give to somebody, so we need to ask what qualifications, expertise, experience and skills the person must have before he or she can make the determination. The regulation requires appropriate qualifications, knowledge, competence and training, but the legislation does not clearly prescribe the professional qualifications and competencies required of an assessment officer. That needs to change. An assessment officer should be properly qualified, properly trained, experienced in disability matters, competent in applying the legislation and capable of a co-ordinated and genuinely multidisciplinary assessment. Assessment officers should not replace clinical, psychological, educational or therapeutic professionals. The role should be clearly defined in law to co-ordinate the process, gather and evaluate the relevant evidence, ensure the statutory requirements are met, and make decisions within the limits of their training, expertise, and legal authority. Where specialist evidence is required, the officer must have timely access to the appropriate professionals. This is particularly important when an officer is considering a "no disability" determination. That decision must be based on sufficient evidence, properly recorded reasons and appropriate professional support. The child and his or her parents must understand how the decision was reached and be clearly informed of the review and appeal rights. This is not about creating another bureaucratic hurdle. It is about getting the decisions right, and the concern is not theoretical. The HSE has warned that the proposed sequencing of the process could create delays in obtaining educational reports and completing the assessment of need within six months. That is a serious concern. If the new legislation requires a disability determination before the education component can proceed, the Government must ensure that this additional stage does not stop or reset the clock or delay access to the full assessment. The six-month period must run from the date when the valid application is received. It must not begin when the assessment moves from the disability determination stage to the health or educational needs stage. If the State has failed to meet its legal obligations, the answer cannot be to change the rules for the family who have already been waiting. We need both things at the same time: a properly qualified assessment officer and a genuinely multidisciplinary assessment process. We should not streamline the system by removing expertise from it. We should streamline it by ensuring the right expertise is there. For too long, disabled children and their families have been asked to wait for an assessment, therapy, school supports and the Government to act. Families have waited enough. --- 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/2026-09-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-23