Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My colleagues, Deputy Fleming and the former Chairman of this committee, Deputy McGuinness, made similar comments about the State Claims Agency and contingent liability - revealing more information and detail from that. I raise that matter here in this forum. Like Deputy Verona Murphy, I await the full report next week.

On disability services, I am with Deputy Verona Murphy in that I do not know where to start. It is such a wide area. I want to just focus on one aspect. I wish to talk about people who require assessment of needs, particularly for the purposes of special education or provision of supports in mainstream education. I continually receive reports that people who cannot afford private assessments are left waiting for long periods for assessments. Last year, there was an attempt to move to a kind of accelerated assessment of needs. That was overturned and they had to come back. What efforts are being made to try to improve the waiting times for assessment of needs?