Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy Tully for her question, which is a valid one. To be honest, it is part of recommendation No. 19:

A clear plan must be communicated to parents regarding the situation with AONs going forward, including timelines and information on what measures are being taken, budgetary and otherwise, to get children the services they need.

On the next page, recommendation No. 25 states: "An education campaign should be launched to provide parents, care-givers and children with accessible information about the AON process." To be very fair to the Department of Education, two years ago it removed the criterion for an AON to be provided for children with additional needs to access mainstream education, but they do need to have an AON to access a special class. That is the caveat. The HSE says that an assessment is not required to access services.

People have a statutory right to an assessment but do not need to have that assessment to access services. It is important to say that with regard to financial supports, people need a diagnosis to get the domiciliary carer's allowance. We have a family with a child and parents, with three different sets of criteria. The overarching umbrella of it all is that if people had an assessment of need, it would perhaps give a quicker mechanism to get a special class and financial supports, but it does not say that they will get quicker interventions. In fact, clinicians would prefer to deliver interventions.