Disability (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Danny Healy-Rae (IND), Kerry I welcome the Disability (Amendment) Bill and any improvements it will make to the assessment of needs process relating to children. We have spoken at length here about children with disabilities and adult children with disabilities. In Kerry, their lot has not improved much. I am asking again for the Government to be more meaningful and to mean what it says. There are far too many families with additional needs and disabilities who are waiting far too long for their assessments of needs as well as other appointments of speech and language therapists, occupational therapists or physiotherapists and SNAs. We have been waiting, and there is a serious lack of all those people. Early intervention is crucial for a child with additional needs. It is shameful to see the length of time children have to wait for an assessment. Many are obliged to wait years. When a baby is born and grows up a little, the parents sometimes find that something is lacking or wrong. They want the best for their child, which is only natural. The cost that they have to bear could be for all their lives as they want to improve the lot of that child. There is a shortage of staff in all these areas, and positions do not seem to be filled when someone is transferred or goes out on leave. It is not fair on these families that they have to wait so long and fight for their children to receive the treatments they need. Many families have no option but to pay out for private assessments or therapies even if they cannot afford it. Many cannot afford it and have to go short on something else. They dearly love their children and they want them to have the best so they will do anything or go short themselves to ensure that they get those things. It is not fair that in many instances the State is leaving these families behind. Then there are adult children. I have a serious concern about elderly parents caring for elderly adult children who have disabilities and special needs. These parents contact me. Their main concern is what will happen to their adult child should something happen to either one or both of them. That is a serious concern for these people. I worry when I see what these adult parents have gone through all their lives and what they continue to do on a daily basis. They have to bring their children into Killarney to attend day centres. It is unfair that these elderly parents are not provided with the necessary respite care or options for respite to give family members a well-earned rest. There is a huge shortage of residential care for adults with disabilities. I again ask that the Government consider St. Mary of the Angels, which has been and continues to be closed by stealth. It is an ideal location that should be considered to provide respite, as it is badly needed. St. Mary of the Angels is in the heart of mid-Kerry, in Beaufort. It was a farm given free to the health services by the Doyle family, going back in time. It is an ideal place to improve and to have more respite there rather than sending adult children who need respite up the country to Tipperary and, in one case, to County Meath. That is not fair on the people in Kerry who are trying to see after and to mind adult children and to get a break in sending them to respite services. I appeal to the Government. There is a Fianna Fáil Minister in Kerry, and I ask her to do her utmost to ensure that St. Mary of the Angels is opened up properly and developed. --- 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