Disability (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23
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Jen Cummins (SD), Dublin South-Central

I welcome the effort to streamline things for children with disabilities but I have a number of concerns. It starts from when a child is born. In my own constituency of Dublin South-Central there is a lack of public health nurses so developmental checks that take place at zero to six months, six to 12 months, one to two years and three to five years and so on are not happening in my constituency. There is not enough staffing. The challenge parents have is that they might get their zero to six month check when the child is six months.
They are often given a tick-box checklist: "These are the things you should look out for." Early intervention and identification of developmental delays at that age are essential and are connected to assessments of need, AONs, because if we are not able to get an assessment of need, if a child is on a waiting list for an average of 27 months, how will they know what that is? I know this legislation is an effort to streamline things. Even when a child does get an assessment of need, where are the services? The reality is that so many children do not get the services. As education spokesperson for my party, my huge concern is the fact that the assessment of need is no longer needed for provision in a special class or a special school place.
How will the school know what the child's needs are without suitable documentation? There are concerns among education unions that they were not consulted when this announcement was made earlier in the year. How exactly will this work in practice? Deputy Quaide has spent so many months and years looking into this and identifying where the challenges are. From an education perspective, we see even today, in this House, that we have two special schools in respect of which the parents are begging us to facilitate what is needed in those schools even more. We are constantly playing catch-up for children with disabilities and adults with disabilities. I am so concerned that this system is so confusing, is so hard to navigate and is understaffed.
My other concern is that those children who did not get a public health nurse visit or an assessment of need on time - now they do not need one - are not getting this service in the CDNT or primary care and not getting an appropriate school place. What does that say to a child? They were failed by the health system and then they will be failed by the education system. We are failing them. I have massive concerns that this is a way of just getting rid of those over 20,000 children who are waiting over six months and the €23 million the State has spent to defend that delay.

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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