Disability (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23
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Rory Hearne (SD), Dublin North-West

There is extreme concern, as my colleagues have expressed, that really what is going on here is the Government trying to hide the scale of need that it is not meeting and that this is not ultimately about delivering services but about trying to take the political pressure off. It is disgraceful when we look at the waiting lists. Of course, that is the power of the waiting lists. They reveal the level of need that is there. The waiting lists that were released as a result of the great work by my colleague, Deputy Quaide, show that, for example, 3,500 children between zero and four years of age are waiting for psychology. These children are at the most important stage of their development. There are 1,000 children waiting over a year. That is the figure only for those between zero and four years of age. Of those, 464 are in my constituency.
Another area is speech and language therapy. These are children awaiting initial therapy. Let us say you get the assessment or you are passed on. How long do you wait for the actual therapy? There are 6,500 children across this country waiting for initial therapy. There are 680 waiting more than two years, and two thirds of those are in my constituency and the Dublin north area.
These waiting lists are absolutely unacceptable. There is an inequality as well in all this because we know from talking to parents that many of them are forced to pay privately to try to access the various services. What that means for those on lower incomes is that they are pushed. We saw the research from Barnardos showing that two out of every ten families literally cannot put food on the table. Part of the reason is that families are squeezed to try to pay for services the State should provide. The Government says that it is about cherishing all children equally and that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are about giving every child the same opportunity, while these children whose families cannot afford to pay to access services do not have the same opportunity. They are stuck on waiting lists for basic services that should give them equal chances in life but they are not getting them. We have a deeply unequal society. The Government talks about all the gains it is making and all the changes it makes, but these children whose families cannot afford to go private and who are stuck on waiting lists are being developmentally delayed and being denied basic opportunities and supports. The minimum we should have is a public primary care system that meets every child's needs regardless of the ability of the family to pay for them.

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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