Disability (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23
============================================================

Pa Daly (SF), Kerry

When we strip away all of the legislative jargon and the Government's spin surrounding this Bill, one question remains: is it going to get additional services for the children who need it? That is not just a concern that has been expressed on these benches. Even some of the Government's own representatives have questioned whether this is going to happen. The answer, unfortunately, is "No". The Bill is being presented as a solution to the assessments of need crisis, but the same Government that has presided over the collapse of the assessments of need system is now introducing the legislation that appears designed just to make the waiting lists look smaller on paper. At the end of June, there were 23,000 children waiting beyond the statutory timeframe for an assessment of need and 20,000 waiting more than three months beyond the legal deadline. Those are children whose development is being delayed. Families are living in uncertainty. Parents are forced to fight the State for years to get the services that they are entitled to receive.
The crisis cannot be resolved through administrative changes like the Government is seeking to do. It requires investment and leadership and that is what the Government has failed to provide. Year after year, governments arrive with a Bill that seeks to streamline the process, but who are they streamlining it for? There is no assurance that families will find themselves removed from waiting lists through bureaucratic processes that they do not fully understand. There is no confidence that children who are taken off lists will be quickly reinstated when circumstances prevent attendance at appointments. Parents have every reason to be worried because this Bill does not address the real crisis. There is not one additional speech and language therapist. There is not one additional occupational therapist. There is not one additional psychologist and no additional special education place. There is no guarantee that any child who receives an assessment of need will actually receive the therapies they deserve.

---

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