Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Parents of children with special needs simply face too many barriers and obstacles to accessing services, including school placements, respite, proper and timely assessments, and basic equipment and aids to help their children get through the daily tasks of life.

For example, the number of children who are waiting for appropriate occupational therapy assessment is extraordinary. Nationally, 4,640 children have been waiting for more than a year for their first OT assessment despite the Disability Act 2005 stipulating a statutory requirement of three months. In counties Cork and Kerry, which are the worst, well over 1,700 have been waiting for longer than that period for occupational therapy assessment. Up to 60 children in one school are on a waiting list with no special school placement available to them. Some 14,000 are waiting for speech and language assessment. There is no certainty and parents are facing terrible anxiety.

As the Taoiseach knows, the therapy services are critical. The assessment and the subsequent access to services are critical to children. Those awaiting OT assessment include children with conditions such as cerebral palsy, dyspraxia and spina bifida. The lack of prioritisation in this area is a shocking indictment of what is going on.

Up to 30 parents have been waiting for two years to get a single weekend of respite. Due to cuts to its funding, the disability organisation had to apply a chronological dividing line. That was only resolved last week after we had to bring the parents' representatives to Dublin to meet the Minister of State with responsibility for those with special needs, Deputy Finian McGrath. Those parents of children with severe and profound autism have been without respite for two to three years. It should not take that long and the dynamic of a meeting to kick the system into action to provide for them.

Last week I met parents of a young child with muscular dystrophy. There is an extraordinary rationing and medieval bureaucratic system around applications for aids and appliances. I am talking about wheelchairs, specialist footwear for a child with muscular dystrophy and particular body suits that prevent scoliosis or other complications arising. I put it to the Taoiseach that a fundamental and comprehensive look needs to be taken at timely access for such services for children. The mindset and the attitude has to change and the barriers have to be taken down. Parents of children with special needs are still saying that they are facing too many barriers as well as huge stress and anxiety.

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