Taoiseach says legislation on assessment of needs should be changed
Micheál Martin said a decision by the High Court 'necessitates' a change in legislation to ensure therapists can provide services to children more quickly.
It comes as teenage campaigner Cara Darmody, 14, began staging a 50-hour protest outside Leinster House this morning, against the backlog of assessment needs in the system.
An assessment of need (AON) is carried out to identify if a child, children or young person has a disability, and is designed to identify their health needs as well as service requirements.
Once the HSE receives an application, there is a legal requirement for the AON to be completed within six months.
The total number of applications overdue for completion at the end of March 2025 stood at 15,296 – an 8pc rise on the end of 2024.
The HSE anticipates that by the end of the year there could be as many as 24,796 AONs due for completion.
This evening, the Dáil will debate a combined opposition party motion during Sinn Féin private members' time. The Government is not expected to oppose it.
Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald told the Dail during Leaders' Questions: 'Children with disabilities are legally entitled to an assessment of needs within six months. Yet 15,296 children are left well beyond this timeframe, some for years, delaying their access to vital therapies and appropriate school places.
'One mother got a letter on Friday to acknowledge her application for assessment of needs, and was informed that the waiting list is in excess of three years.
'Even then, when you get your assessment of needs, the fight continues, the fight for therapies, for school places, for very, very basic services. Taoiseach, you have broken the law over and again.
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'There is a legal requirement on you to provide an assessment of needs within six months, and you have broken that over and over again.'
Mr Martin said that disability issues are now represented at the Cabinet table by a full minister.
'I am in the process of establishing the first ever disability unit within the Department of Taoiseach to troubleshoot and to co-ordinate across all government departments the provision of services for people with disabilities,' he added.
'The need is increasing all of the time.
He said there had been a huge increase in resources in terms of special needs assistance, 'at about 23,400 now, we have 20,800 special education teachers, SNA alone is about a billion a year, and that's the way it should be', he added.
He continued: 'In relation to the assessment of need, quite fundamentally, we need to change the legislation, the High Court decision necessitates, in my view, a change in legislation to ensure that therapists are directed and streamlined to provide services to children more quickly than currently is the case.'
Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik said there was a 93pc failure rate for assessment within six months, which was a "shocking" embarrassment.
'It's not tenable for the many thousands of children, 15,000 children nationally, who are now languishing on waiting lists, awaiting an assessment of needs. In breach of your government's own law,' she said.
'When the HSE receives an application Taoiseach, it's set out in law that the assessment of need must be carried out within six months."
Mr Martin said the issue was not one of resources but one of capacity.
'But in my view, the standing upper rating procedure model that the HSE adopted was struck down by the courts, and the rationale behind it was to prioritise establishing the needs of children rather than providing the diagnosis immediately,' he added.
'I think we have to facilitate more recruitment of therapists from overseas, and I think the regulatory body needs to be flexible in that regard.'
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