Disability (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23
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Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

I welcome the opportunity to comment on today's Bill. I have three key points to deal with: first, fragmentation of services; then the suitability of the people making assessments; and, finally, the root causes of these issues.
First, accessing services is fragmented, difficult and plagued with delays. This Bill and this Government, instead of ensuring that children are not waiting ten years for primary care psychology or speech and language therapy, are simply moving the goalposts and creating a new system which fails to guarantee children and their families the supports they need. Pressure on the assessment of need system does not justify gatekeeping access. While it may massage the numbers, the reality is that it will leave thousands of children uncounted and unsupported.
These are not just my words and my views, and I thank the parents who told me and my office about their experiences. A mother of three children with additional needs told my colleague:
Children will not be appropriately identified, and it places teachers and parents in a very difficult situation. Is this just Government trying to cover over the extent to which they continue to fail our children?
We need to treat children with disabilities equally, as full people. They may have educational needs, health needs and social needs just like the rest of us. Our systems should move to recognise the whole person, not further silo off support and leave parents going from pillar to post, from waiting list to waiting list, all while struggling to give their children the best support they can.
My second point is that this system means that people who are not qualified to assess children are put in a position of deciding what level of support they need. This Bill does not require the assessment officers to have relevant clinical qualifications or experience, so the gatekeeper of the proposed system does not necessarily need to have any clinical expertise. Another parent in my constituency shared her experience with me, and it shows just what we risk when we do not have properly qualified people conducting assessments:
My daughter was just diagnosed Autistic last year while trying to transition to secondary school and dealing with puberty. At all parent teacher meetings at primary level we asked how she was socially as I had always had a feeling she faced additional challenges. We were mostly reassured that she was fine, even though she had very few friends. This is not to blame the school. The primary school is amazing but they just don't know what they don't know.
My final point is that we need to address the root causes of waiting lists and service delays, not treat the symptoms by trying to lessen the number of people who can access the system. Our disability services are plagued by underinvestment, huge workloads and a poor or non-existent referral system. These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. These are real children and real families and they deserve real support, not moving goalposts.

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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