Disability (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Barry Heneghan (IND), Dublin Bay North Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta Toole. Bíonn sí i gcónaí ag teacht isteach sa Teach seo chun solutions a thabhairt. I commend her on her work on the disability committee. I also commend the Minister of State and her staff on the Bill and the sensible measures it contains and on the work that has been done. I will always support anything that makes the process faster, clearer and more consistent for every parent and child across Ireland. There are definitely good provisions in the Bill. I commend the standardising of the process across the six health regions. If this is done right, it will be life-changing. Giving the families the proper mechanisms to withdraw applications temporarily and reinstate it makes sense. I really welcome that. Some of the parents I have spoken to are happy and feel like they are being listened to. However, there will always be something I will look to add. We need to be clear about the scale of what is involved. There are thousands of overdue applications for assessments of need. I have submitted parliamentary questions on this matter. Changing the process will help, but we cannot just change the process. We must also change capacity and what will happen to the child and their family after they get an assessment. That is what parents keep telling me and that is what I will keep pushing for. I recently spoke to a mother in Dublin Central - she is watching me right now – about access to her son’s OT. I have emailed the Department and all the stakeholders involved. Her point is very straightforward. Families continually hear about increased budgets, new posts and additional investment but this means very little when their child is still waiting for an appointment. There is a huge issue with OTs in Dublin Central. I would love the Department to investigate this and see what can be done. Dublin Central is not my constituency and this is not something I would generally raise, but the woman in question is a very passionate and solution-focused mother and I wanted to raise her case. There are other things we need to look at. I have raised this with Deputy Carrigy when the Oireachtas committee was focusing on autism with in relation to CORU and the recognition of foreign-qualified practitioners who can help with our waiting lists. The Department responded to some of my parliamentary questions by saying that it will investigate the possibilities in this regard. I am looking for an update on speech and language therapists and OTs who qualified in other EU countries. Sometimes they are missing one qualification that does not allow them to practise here but if they went to the US, Australia or Canada, they could practise. I do not understand when we are in an acute crisis that this is the case. It is not just a case of how many posts there are. We also really need to look at the regulatory bottlenecks. Another point that coincides with this is one that is not specific to disabilities. I was speaking to people in Athletic Rehabilitation Therapy Ireland, ARTI, about waiting lists for AT. They raised a very reasonable question which underlines my point. If appropriately qualified professionals could assist in reducing pressure on services but the barrier to doing so is regulation and policy, why can we not speed that up? I ask the Minister of State to examine not only ARTI’s position but the wider CORU recognition and regulatory process so as to speed up qualification recognition and so reduce waiting lists. The disconnect between the unidentified needs does exist and needs to be addressed. Going back to my constituency, there is a documentary by Eric Roberts relating to Stapolin Educate Together National School. I have raised this multiple times in the House. The Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, visited the school and was brilliant on site. He has constantly engaged with my office, and I welcome that. I would love for the Minister of State or any of her staff to address this matter too. The school has already been awarded three special classes. It has applied for two additional special needs modular rooms. I was informed by the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, on Friday that the application is currently under consideration. If anything can be done on that, I would really welcome it. This goes back to the point that if we granting assessments, we have the data that the children are there. The school in question is saying it will provide the places. We need to be able to respond quicker to that and to CORU regulations. It is another part of the conversation we cannot ignore. --- 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