Disability (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Barry Ward (FG), Dún Laoghaire I broadly welcome the Bill. It is not a very long Bill but it is important insofar as it sets out important minimum standards. One thing on which we can all agree is that we must make this process easier for the people who need assistance. We must make it easier for people to get the assessments and to get help in place so that they can then reap the benefits of that assistance. We know that there are people the length and breadth of this country who need assistance and who, in reality, are not getting it or not getting it in sufficient quantities or in a timely manner. We can all get behind the idea that the purpose of this Bill has to be to make it easier for people who have additional needs and who need the support of the State. I might start by making a point about the drafting. This is something I say about all amending legislation like this Bill. The 2005 Act is the principal Act, the Act that is being amended, but it is impossible to know what this Bill, which will be an Act, does without having a copy of the 2005 Act next to you. Because sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 amend provisions of the 2005 Act, it is impossible to know what they are actually changing unless you have the 2005 Act present. This is a point I make quite a lot. When we are amending legislation, we should consolidate that legislation. Instead of amending specific provisions within a section, we should repeal that section and restate it in the amending Bill because that would make it much more accessible for everyone. This is part of what I am talking about, the need for it to be more easily accessible. You should not need to have two pieces of legislation to understand what one of them does. In general, we should be moving towards simply restating the law, making it available in one place rather than in two. That is a technical issue more than anything else. With regard to what this Bill does, the specific and targeted amendments I have mentioned relate to certain aspects of the existing assessment of need process and aim to make the system more effective and efficient. However, I do not believe that legislation alone is actually going to do that. It may well be a tool that is required to achieve it but what the people who need disability assistance and various services want to know is whether this legislation will actually change the landscape for them in real terms. Are they actually going to be able to access the services they need in a timely and efficient manner? The review of the 2005 Act, which is being led by the Department of children, is obviously welcome. The notion of nationwide statutory guidelines to standardise how the HSE carries out assessments and consistency across geographic regions of the country are very important. However, we already have targets that have never really been achieved, including the six-month deadline which has been breached time and time again. Perhaps the Minister of State will have an opportunity to address this in what she has to say but, however necessary this legislation might be, it is not clear to me how it guarantees in any real way that those targets will be reached. That is a question I am asked all the time by people in Dún Laoghaire. They want to know how we are actually going to change this system so that it works for the people who need those services. Even though the statutory six-month deadline for assessments of need exists in law, every one of us in this Chamber has spoken to constituents. I do not want to say that deadline has been disregarded because I do not think there is anybody out there who is not trying to meet it but we have not managed to deliver on it. We have to be able to deliver if anybody is to have confidence that we are reforming this system in a way that will actually make a difference. The approach of this legislation has to be about making it easier and more accessible for families. We must ensure the staff are in place to operate this system. If there are vacancies, that needs to be addressed. Most of us will have heard stories of gaps that are there and situations that have not been filled. That creates delays and knock-on effects for families and people with disabilities. That has to be addressed. I sometimes despair at the slow pace of progress. Again, I do not think anybody is deliberately frustrating progress but, as legislators, it is our job not only to put in place measures requiring progress but also to put in place mechanisms to support delivery. I support the provision of the 11 new inreach teams, which will be available to provide clinical guidance and support for clinicians performing assessments of need and the assessments informed by the new autism access assessment protocol. I note that each team will include a psychologist, a speech and language therapist, an occupational therapist and an administrator. That is welcome because that is the kind of thing you can point to when dealing with constituents. It allows you to say that concrete things are being done to ease the process and to grease the wheels in a way that will actually have a tangible effect on the ground. I welcome the fact that these teams are being put in place. The Bill is quite short containing not very many amendments. I hope the Minister of State will be able to give us a commitment that the effect of the realisation of these amendments on the ground will be to create greater, more efficient and faster access for people with additional needs, people with disabilities, their families and their parents so that they can get what they need and to deliver for those people. That is what everyone in here wants. That is what we are all waiting for. --- 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