Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

They said that they were actually spending all of the time doing the assessments of need, because there was a legal imperative. However, they were not getting to deliver the services as a consequence of that. That is really an alarm bell. If one has an assessment of need and then one does not have any follow-up regarding occupational, speech and language or behavioural therapy, or whatever it is that is required; if that does not flow from the assessment of needs; and if that time is taken up doing that, there is a huge underprovision. Essentially, there are consequences for that which get picked up with regard to the child themselves, and also the cost later on, because one will always have to come back and undo damage that is done by virtue of the fact that one has not intervened.