Dr. Niall Muldoon:

Regarding assessment of need, we do not have specific numbers but the key issue for me is the fact that the HSE reckons that it can only do 9% of assessments of need within the legal statutorily obliged timeline. This leaves 91% of our children waiting for far too long. The point I was making is that people are trying, through assessments of need, to access services they should get through the EPSEN Act if it was up and running. Parents go there because they have nowhere else to go. That is the problem. We have not created the system the way it should be created. To fair, setting up the EPSEN Act and the Disability Act in 2004 showed a real foresight into how we would want it to be. We now need to follow through on that.